Ellen Naomi Zisholtz (MA ’79) Named 2025 Steinhardt Visionary

Ellen Naomi Zisholtz (MA ’79, Training of Performing Arts Administration) has been named 2025’s Steinhardt Visionary as part of this year’s cohort of Spirit of Steinhardt Alumni Award winners.

Zisholtz was working as the director of the arts for the city of Passaic, New Jersey, when she hurt her back moving a theatre set. Living in White Meadow Lake, in the middle of a divorce with four young children, suburban life wasn’t exactly what this native New Yorker had pictured for herself. That’s when she received a call from friend and fellow arts administrator Brann Wry.

“Brann said he was starting a performing arts administration program at NYU Steinhardt that he thought would be a good fit for me,” says Zisholtz. “One of my favorite quotes is by John W. Gardner: ‘We are all faced with a series of great opportunities brilliantly disguised as insoluble problems.’ This was my opportunity.”

Zisholtz took the bus more than an hour each way from New Jersey to take classes, sometimes staying overnight with friends. She was able to immerse herself into the program and the city’s art and theatre scene.

After graduating, Zisholtz embarked on a robust, 50-year career as a visual artist, academic, civil rights advocate, and arts administrator. She is currently founder, president, and CEO of the Center for Creative Partnerships (CCP), a social justice organization that promotes community involvement through the arts and humanities in Orangeburg, South Carolina. 

Under her leadership, the CCP is preserving the Orangeburg All-Star Bowling Lanes, which is on the National Register for Historic Places, to honor the victims of the 1968 Orangeburg Massacre in which three students were killed and at least 29 wounded by police. This one-of-a-kind project will feature a Civil Rights Bowling Alley, museum exhibits, films, and space for education, reflection, and community healing.

As project director, Zisholtz has helped the project secure four National Park Service grants totaling $2.75 million. CCP is working to develop an Artist Village adjoining All Star Bowling with affordable live-work artist housing. Two other projects include “Preserving History” interviews and the Orangeburg outdoor museum honoring civil rights sites with funding from the Association of African American Museums, NPS African American Civil Rights Network, SC Humanities, and City of Orangeburg.

“It’s a great compliment to be called a visionary,” says Zisholtz. “I work hard and I care about things.”

Prior to her work at the CCP, Zisholtz’s theatre productions included To the Max, written and performed by her friend Max Roach. For 10 years she was director and curator of South Carolina State University’s I.P. Stanback Museum and Planetarium and Assistant Professor in the Department of Visual and Performing Arts; she also taught at NYU Steinhardt, NYU Gallatin, and Rutgers University. As museum director and curator at SC State, she won many awards for her innovative exhibitions. When James Brown died, she was chosen to preserve his memorabilia for seven years, creating two major exhibitions and presenting two concerts in which his family danced with students to music played by his original band.

Her leadership extends to service on the boards of the Association of African American Museums, the Center for Heirs’ Property Preservation, and the Penn Center, where she coordinated the first Gullah Studies Institute. She has served on the grants committee for the Institute of Museum and Library Services’ Museum Grants for African American History and Culture and authored the strategic plan for the historic Farish Street District in Jackson, Mississippi, funded by the Mississippi Department of Archives and History.

Zisholtz’s many honors include the 2023 Smith, Hammond, Middleton Social Justice Award from South Carolina State University; the 2017 Leadership Award from the Association of African American Museums; the 2015 Medal for Social Justice and Civil Rights from the National Civil Rights Conference in Philadelphia, Mississippi; and South Carolina State University’s first Faculty Award in Creativity, presented at Commencement by Congressman James Clyburn. She also guided the I.P. Stanback Museum to receive the Governor’s Award for the Humanities and the inaugural Social Justice Award at the Orangeburg Massacre Commemoration.