HOFFMAN NEW DIRECTOR OF STATE ARTS CONFEDERATION

Susan Hoffman, founder and former executive director of a 50-member, nonprofit arts groups coalition in San Francisco, has taken over as executive director of the California Confederation of the Arts.

She assumed the position earlier this month from June Gutfleisch who resigned from the state arts advocacy agency in February after 4 1/2 years in the post.

Hoffman, selected by board members of the confederation, which monitors the California Arts Council, attended her first council meeting at a regular session at UCLA last week.

Hoffman, 32, said she was pleased to take over the post at a time when the statewide arts community has become “highly organized” and “focused.”

“Everyone is very able to be political actors now, and I hope, to begin to create greater interest for the arts within grass-roots arenas and from powerful decision makers,” she said.

A resident of San Francisco, Hoffman founded the People’s Theater Coalition at the Fort Mason Center there in 1979. She ran the facility until 1985. Before that, she was an instructor for six years in cultural trends at UC Santa Cruz.