Anne Ishii to step down as leader of Philly’s Asian Arts Initiative

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Anne Ishii’s 2018 move from New York to Philadelphia was twofold: the writer and editor longed to live here and she could lead to the esteemed Asian Arts Initiative.

“In my world as an Asian American, this is one of the most important places of cultural leadership, arts production, and really at the bleeding edge of thinking about creative placemaking and what cultural power looks like,” Ishii said. “I was just shocked that more people didn’t know about it.”

It’s been an eventful six years: overseeing AAI’s art education, and community programs, keeping its building at 12th and Vine constantly active, pivoting to community care programs during the pandemic, becoming a cultural thought leader during the summer of 2020 and its calls for racial equity, and hosting a television series on WHYY-TV.

Ishii has now decided to step down from the Asian Arts Initiative, effective Aug. 15.

“In the last year I had been thinking about how to reduce my work capacity. I personally am feeling like I need a lighter workload,” she said. “The organization can’t afford to have an executive director who works any less than full-time.”

As AAI searches for a new leader, its director of programs Dave Kyu will serve as interim executive director. Ishii said she will remain in Philadelphia to begin a position at another organization, but is not yet at liberty to reveal her next position. She will remain as a consultant to AAI for about a year.

“This isn’t to say that where I’m going next would be demanding less of my expertise or my time, but I wouldn’t have to be holding six different kinds of work,” she said. “Being place-based, it’s 26,000 square feet of a building and every square foot requires an ounce of attention.”

The Asian Arts Initiative began in 1993 under founding director Gayle Isa as a program within the Painted Bride to bring together Black and Asian poets for cultural collaborations. Ishii maintained the organization’s founding principle of using the arts to build community.

“Gayle Isa left big shoes to fill after her long tenure as Executive Director at Asian Arts Initiative, but Ann Ishii rose to the occasion in a tremendous way,” said Rob Buscher of the Japan America Society of Greater Philadelphia and a longtime worker in the city’s Asian cultural sector.

“It has been exciting to see the boundary pushing exhibits and performance offerings under Ann’s time as executive director that expanded Philadelphia’s Asian American arts scene in previously unimaginable ways,” he said.

Ishii’s programming taste has tended to run toward punk, queer, experimental and marginalized artists. She said she is particularly proud of the work AAI has done to draw out nuances and diversities within the Asian cultural sector.

“A common denominator doesn’t have to be low. It just has to be common. I think that’s something we did really well,” she said. “I think there’s an imagined ideal of what communities of color look like when they work in community and Coalition. At AAI it was happening in real time, every day.”

Ishii expects to stay involved in Philadelphia’s creative community. She is an avid drummer, experimental musician and fashionista. But she has never allowed herself to perform at the organization she led.

“I am very, personally invested in the music scene in Philly. So I hope to keep playing. I want to keep programming,” she said. “With enough time and distance from the organization, maybe I’ll be invited to perform at AAI.”