William King Regional Arts Center’s Board of Trustees and Betsy White, announce her plans to retire as executive director in late December. White has served as the Abingdon museum’s executive director twenty years except for a three-year period during the 1990s when she initiated and led the Center’s Cultural Heritage Project field survey of regional decorative arts and material culture.

“As our Executive Director, Betsy White has been a dynamic and innovative leader. Under her guidance, the Arts Center has grown from a dilapidated, obsolete building to a high-security, nationally accredited museum. While this accomplishment is amazing, Betsy’s true legacy will no doubt be her constant emphasis on providing art education to the children of this region. Betsy has built a strong foundation upon which the Arts Center will grow,” said Byrum Geisler, President of the Arts Center’s Board of Trustees.

During her tenure, the Arts Center has renovated its 1913 building adapting it as a high-security gallery, has been nationally accredited by the American Association of Museums, has developed extensive art education programs for elementary schools across fourteen school districts in Southwest Virginia, and maintains an active affiliation with the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. In addition, the Center’s Cultural Heritage Project has been a first-time documentation of the culture of the region and has resulted in over twenty exhibitions at the Arts Center, as well as a permanent archive and a book, Great Road Style: the Decorative Arts Legacy of Southwest Virginia & Northeast Tennessee, authored by White and published by the University of Virginia Press in 2006.

“The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts has been privileged to work with Betsy White over the years. Her stellar leadership of the William King Regional Arts Center and her tireless advocacy for arts education in Virginia has significantly contributed to our state’s cultural advancement and well-being. In addition, Betsy’s expertise and scholarship in the decorative arts have recognized and thus safeguarded Southwest Virginia’s vital artistic heritage. I look forward to her future contributions, for I know they will be many, and to continuing our mutual support of the arts in Virginia,” said Alex Nyerges, VMFA Director.

White serves as a peer reviewer for the Virginia Commission for the Arts and the American Association of Museums and is a past reviewer for the Institute of Museum and Library Services. She is past vice-president of the Virginia Association of Museums and recently completed two terms on Abingdon’s Architectural Review Board, where she served as chair for three years. She currently represents Southwest Virginia on the board of Virginians for the Arts, is on the founding board of the new craft-based regional organization, ‘Round the Mountain, and is on the management team for the new artisan center, Heartwood: Southwest Virginia’s Artisan Gateway.

“It is such a privilege and joy to have been part of this fine organization for so many years. I think its next ten years will be so exciting, and I look forward to them as one of the Arts Center’s most enthusiastic patrons,” said White.