Mid-Shore Arts: Maria Wood and a New RiverArts Era

It shouldn’t come as a shock for anyone who knows the Wood family, originally from Queen Anne’s County, that a Wood is now running Chestertown RiverArts. For at least three generations, the Woods have been directly involved in Mid-Shore arts. Starting with grandmother and writer Mary Wood, and her own parents long-term patrons of the arts, Maria Woods is undoubtedly carrying on this tradition as the new director of RiverArts.

What is not in the Woods family tradition, however, are global pandemics. Whatever plans Maria might have had just weeks ago for RiverArts have been placed on the back burner as she and her colleagues must reinvent relationships with its community of artists and students as the result of coronavirus.

A few days ago, we talked remotely with Maria as RiverArts, the community’s leading visual arts organization, about this new “normal” in Kent County.