The Friends of the Hartman Rock Garden is excited to announce the appointment of Kevin Rose as the organization’s first Executive Director. Kevin has extensive experience in the cultural tourism sector through his two decades as the Historian at the Turner Foundation. Kevin was part of the team that worked with the Wisconsin-based Kohler Foundation to save and restore the site back in 2009, and has served as the Turner Foundation’s liaison on the project for the past fourteen years. “Kevin has the knowledge and passion for the Hartman Rock Garden that is needed to move forward as we embark on exciting changes in the coming years! It’s a perfect match!” said Friends of the Hartman Rock Garden Board Chair Marlies Hemmann.
ABOUT KEVIN ROSE
Kevin Rose is a historian, humanist, curator, and community advocate in Springfield, Ohio. He has served for the past twenty years as Historian at the Turner Foundation, a family foundation focused on the revitalization of one of America’s hardest urban centers. Kevin oversees the foundation’s work in historic preservation, cultural tourism, and creative placemaking. In 2004, he founded the Summer Tour Series, an annual collection of walking, bicycle, and coach tours of the Greater Springfield Region. Kevin has researched and written over forty tours himself, from bicycle tours of Yellow Springs’ modern architecture to poetry walks for children. In 2014, Kevin and his wife Marta Wojcik founded the Westcott Center for Architecture + Design as a regional resource for placemaking strategies. Kevin also serves as the Turner Foundation’s liaison at the Hartman Rock Garden, a visionary art environment created by Ben Hartman in 1932. Kevin assisted the Kohler Foundation in their restoration of the site in 2009 and founded the Friends of the Hartman Rock Garden later that same year. Kevin holds B.A. in History from Wittenberg University and M.A. in Museum Studies at the University of Leicester in England. Kevin is the past president of the Victorian Society, the nation’s leading organization focused on the preservation and study of Late-Nineteenth and Early-Twentieth Century American design, and past board chair of Ohio Humanities, the state partner of the National Endowment for the Humanities. In his free time, Kevin enjoys restoring the family’s 1881 Stick-Eastlake style house in Springfield’s South Fountain Historic District.
