David Tanner joined the WCR Center for the Arts as executive director in December 2024.

Tanner served for 12 years as the director of the Center for the Arts at Albright College, Reading, until he was promoted to dean of arts and cultural resources. During his 14 years at Albright, Tanner managed the Freedman Gallery, serving as director and curator for nine years. He collaborated with student groups, academic departments, and community organizations to expand Albright's arts programs to more than 150 annual events, which received many national awards during his tenure. Tanner also established the arts administration academic program, for which he advised and mentored students and taught all courses.

During his last two years at Albright, he was given oversight of planning for the Black Cultural Collection, the Lakin Holocaust Memorial Resource Center, and the College Archives, while also leading the campus-wide Event Planning and Implementation division.

Previously Tanner served as the chief operating officer of the Burchfield Penney Art Center at Buffalo State College, Buffalo, N.Y., where he shared leadership duties in opening that museum's new 84,000-square-foot, $32 million, silver LEED certified, state-of-the-art facility. For five years he managed business operations as the associate director for administration at the Indiana University Art Museum in Bloomington, Ind., and from 1998 to 2003, he was the executive director for the Association of Midwest Museums (AMM), one of eight regional professional service organizations affiliated with the American Association of Museums (AAM). While in St. Louis, Mo., where AMM was headquartered, he also taught in the graduate program for museum studies at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. Before switching over to the arts, he was the executive director of two small history museums, the West Bend Historical Society in Wisconsin and the Peoria Historical Society in Illinois. 

Tanner is an active member of the museum profession, serving at the national level as both a grant reviewer for the Institute of Museum and Library Services and as a peer reviewer in AAM's Museum Assessment Program. Additionally, he served on the board for the Association of Academic Museums and Galleries and participated in planning numerous conferences for the profession. Locally, Tanner has served on the board of directors for the Pennsylvania's Americana Region, and as secretary for the College Heights Community Council, and he has volunteered for committees and events for the Reading Science Center and Humane Pennsylvania.

Tanner holds a Master of Public Administration in museum administration from Southern Illinois University-Carbondale (SIUC) as well as bachelor's degrees in English, history, and paralegal studies, also from SIUC. As part of that program, he interned in the summer of 2002 at the Institute of Texan Cultures at the University of Texas-San Antonio, where he ran all the merchandise kiosks during the Texas Folklife Festival. 

Tanner also has a personal history with the performing arts, having served as a producer and actor in local community theater productions in Wisconsin and Illinois. His strongest artistic passion has always been dance, and he has formal training in ballet and modern as well as extensive experience with tribal fusion.

To learn more about the WCR Center for the Arts or to donate, visit http://www.wcrcenter.org. Information is also available at http://www.facebook.com/TheWCRCenterForTheArts, http://www.instagram.com/wcrcenter/, or http://www.linkedin.com/company/wcrcenter/.