“When Anne Ewers became chief of the Kimmel Center [in 2007] the debt she inherited … was $30 million, and Ewers has spent the last 14 years on the perpetual fund-raising treadmill,” writes Peter Dobrin in Sunday’s (10/24) Philadelphia Inquirer. “Now she’s ready to step off. Ewers announced a few months ago that with the consolidation of the Kimmel and Philadelphia Orchestra under a single corporate umbrella, she would end her tenure. The quasi-merger was finalized Thursday, and Ewers, the Kimmel’s longest-serving president and CEO, retired Friday…. Ewers, 69, … came to Philadelphia from Salt Lake City, where she had been president and CEO of the Utah Symphony and Opera… She leaves the Kimmel with a balanced budget (as of the end of the fiscal year ending June 30, 2021.) … The quasi-merger puts both the Kimmel and the orchestra under a single parent company now headed by orchestra president and CEO Matías Tarnopolsky…. Coordinated fund-raising is already happening, she says…. The naming rights to Verizon Hall … expire in 2023, and now, with the orchestra and Kimmel operating as one, the prospects of funding a future namesake have brightened … Ewers … will return to serve on the all-volunteer board starting in December.”
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