It was last November, just before the holidays, when I wrote in this column that attorney Bill Neff, who serves as president of the South Shore Arts Board of Directors, had announced a search committee to look for qualified candidates to fill the role of South Shore Arts executive director.

Dave Mika, 62, the current South Shore Arts executive director, had a one-year contract extension expiring in June 2025. Such was the same case when I wrote in February 2022, that after a one-year contract extension guiding the arts in Northwest Indiana, longtime South Shore Arts Executive Director John Cain, at age 66, was retiring to welcome successor Mika, a market president with BMO Bank since 2010 and also a longtime member of the South Shore Arts Board of Directors.

Cain became executive director in October 1993, with the South Shore Arts executive director leadership position also absorbing the duties of being executive director of the NWI Symphony Orchestra and working closely with Maestro Kirk Muspratt, who has spent more than two decades attached to his Hoosier musical arts identity while never forgetting his beloved homeland of Canada.

This week, Mika welcomed his named successor Jonathan Canning, 62, under a four-year contract, as the latest identity and talent to lead South Shore Arts as executive director. Neff and South Shore Arts board member and attorney Carly Brandenburg, who led the national search committee, had narrowed the candidates down to two in the past two months. Canning started his position on Monday, with his office located in the South Shore Arts wing of the Center for Visual and Performing Arts in Munster.

Canning came to Northwest Indiana after he was hired by Valparaiso University in 2022 to lead the Brauer Museum of Art as the new museum director. He spent his childhood raised over the pond in Britain, where he received his undergraduate degree in art history at the Courtauld Institute of Art and then obtained a master’s degree in art history at the University of Delaware and a master’s in philosophy at Columbia University.

“Before joining the Valparaiso University community, I was in the upstate New York area, but I already had a familiarity with Brauer Museum of Art and the university,” said Canning, who earned his graduate degree while in New York.

Canning’s varied work experience also spans the Jewish Museum, the Met Cloisters Museum and the New York Historical Society. He has curated more than 25 exhibitions during his career, including exhibits at the Art Institute of Chicago and the Cleveland Museum of Art.

Canning’s position as the director of the Brauer Museum was among the 14 staff cuts by Valparaiso University announced in June after Canning had to navigate the unwanted media attention for the campus that was associated with the February 2023 revelation that Valparaiso University President Jose Padilla wanted to auction off key paintings in the museum’s collections. If sold, “Mountain Landscape” by Frederic E. Church; “Rust Red Hills” by Georgia O’Keeffe; and “The Silver Veil and Golden Gate” by Frederick Childe Hassam could net a potential combined sales amount of $20 million.

Mika will devote the next four months to working with his successor Canning to ensure a seamless transition to new leadership for South Shore Arts and the Northwest Indiana Symphony.

“John was wonderful to stay on and guide South Shore Arts and the Symphony through the pandemic, delaying his own retirement,” Mika said.

“When the South Shore Arts Board could not find an ideal permanent candidate to lead in John’s place, and his new retirement date was quickly approaching, that’s when I offered the board my services to step in temporarily, with the idea being it wouldn’t be for more than two years of service since the board and my wife Ann and my family all knew I also had my sight set for retirement.”

Philip Potempa is a journalist, author and radio show host on WJOB 1230 AM.

philpotempa@gmail.com