Announcing our new Executive Director
Kitty Rauth, Comfort Station’s new Executive Director. photo credit: Maria Burundarena
After four years helping shape Comfort Station’s artistic vision, and over a year leading the organization through a pivotal period of transition, Kitty steps into the Executive Director role at an exciting moment in Comfort Station’s history.
Since joining Comfort Station as its first Artistic Director in 2022, Kitty has become deeply embedded in the organization and the community around it. Their leadership has helped expand what Comfort Station can make possible: supporting artists and programmers in taking risks, strengthening the structures behind our free public programming, and building new ways for artists, neighbors, and collaborators to have a hand in shaping the organization.
As Artistic Director, she helped lead some of Comfort Station’s most ambitious programming, including Edra Soto’s La Casa de Todos, a major public art installation accompanied by 18 public programs featuring more than 100 artists. Across exhibitions, music, film, and public programming, they have worked closely with artists, programmers, and community partners to make Comfort Station a place for experimentation, gathering, and exchange.
In January, following the planned departure of longtime Executive Director Jordan Martins, Kitty stepped into the role of Interim Executive Director. Over the past nine months, she has guided Comfort Station through a significant period of transition while strengthening the organization for what comes next. Under their leadership, Comfort Station exceeded its annual gala fundraising goal by more than $6,000 and secured significant new support, including a $20,000 general operating grant from the Reva and David Logan Foundation through its LoganArts initiative.
Kitty alongside some of the volunteers and board members who make Comfort Station’s programs possible, at Dog Days of Summer 2026. photo credit: Jae Kim
Kitty brings to the role a deep commitment to artist-run and community-centered organizations. Before joining Comfort Station, they served as an artist member and Exhibitions Chair at Vox Populi in Philadelphia and participates in the collective stewardship of ACRE, the Chicago-based artist residency and exhibition program. She is also a Lecturer in Contemporary Practices and Lecturer Representative at Large at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Across her work, Kitty has focused on building structures that support experimentation, expand access, and give artists and communities meaningful agency in shaping the institutions they participate in.
The Year of Comfort Station
Kitty’s appointment comes at a pivotal moment for Comfort Station. While our historic building is closed for renovation, we’re embracing this time as the Year of Comfort Station: a period of experimentation, reflection, and collective work focused not only on what we do, but on how we do it.
During this time, Kitty is working alongside Comfort Station’s board, staff, programmers, volunteers, artists, and community to examine the structures behind the organization and imagine what we want to carry forward when we return home. That includes overhauling internal systems toward a more equitable, sustainable, and collective working structure for our volunteers and programmers; articulating the values that guide our work; and building pathways for more artists and neighbors to discover Comfort Station, understand what we do, and find their way into the organization.
As our historic building undergoes major renovations to reopen in late spring 2027, we’re moving forward grounded in four values: accessibility, experimentation, transparency, and shared agency. Kitty’s leadership represents both continuity with what has made Comfort Station special and an opportunity to reconsider, together, what this organization can be.
“I feel incredibly lucky to have spent the last four years learning from the artists, programmers, neighbors, volunteers, and collaborators who make Comfort Station what it is. I’m excited to keep building an organization that belongs to the people who use it, and to see what we can make together in this next chapter,” says Kitty.
We couldn’t be more excited to have Kitty leading Comfort Station into what comes next. Please join us in congratulating her, and stay tuned for much more as we prepare to return home in 2027.