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EKU names director of new performing arts center

By Rich Copley rcopley@herald-leader.com

Eastern Kentucky University's new performing arts center, which is under construction, has an executive director.

Katherine Eckstrand, the director of community development for the Ohio Arts Council, will be the director of the EKU Center for the Performing Arts, which is scheduled to be completed in mid-2011.

The 93,000-square-foot center will include a 2,000-seat theater capable of presenting Broadway-style productions and a black-box theater that will seat as many as 250. The center is next to EKU's business and technology center, on the south side of the Eastern By-Pass, between Lancaster Road and Kit Carson Drive.

Before working with the Ohio Arts Council, where she oversees four grant programs and many other projects, Eckstrand was the executive director of the performing arts center at Clark State Community College in Springfield, Ohio.

Before that, she was the arts director and director of cultural programs at Shepherd University in Shepherdstown, W.Va.

She has been the president of both the Ohio Arts Presenters Network and the West Virginia Arts Presenters and served on the boards and in other capacities for numerous national, state and local organizations. Her husband, Edward Weisenbach, is a retired educator and technology director and a bluegrass musician in the Muleskinner Band.