Robert Reese became the executive director of the Cherry Center for the Arts in 1987. As executive director, Reese implements all Cherry Center events and oversees external communications, development, and long-range planning.

For more than 20 years, Reese’s imagination and commitment to noncommercial, contemporary artistic exploration has steered the Cherry along the course laid out by Jeanne D’Orge in the 1940s. “Jeanne D’Orge was very supportive and nurturing of original art and new forms of theater,” says Reese. “Our programs speak to her legacy.”

A former journalist and award-winning essayist, Reese has been anthologized in Best Spiritual Writing and awarded the Monterey County Cultural Council Arts Benefactor Award.

Along with bringing a wide range of current artists to the Cherry—from high school poets to Balinese dancers to local sculptors—Reese incorporates discussion and investigation into every Cherry program.

“Combining literature and art and investigation of an idea, an ethos—that’s unique to the Cherry,” says Reese. “We can do this in part because we have venues for both theater and art. But throughout our history we’ve had this quality of investigation, of opening up and exploring something. To me that is the most essential and critical part of the Cherry Center.”