A Champion for the Arts: Lynda Moran Announces Her Retirement From the Islip Arts Council After 18 Transformative Years
After nearly two decades of visionary leadership, Lynda Moran will step down as Executive Director of the Islip Arts Council on June 30, 2026, concluding an 18-year tenure that helped transform the organization into one of Long Island’s most influential cultural institutions. Since succeeding founder Lillian Barbash in 2008, Moran has championed programs that enriched the lives of thousands of students, artists, and community members throughout Suffolk County, leaving a lasting legacy of creativity, education, and community engagement.
On a mild Sunday afternoon in May at the downtown Islip Street Fair, Moran couldn’t walk two feet without being stopped by someone. The event had drawn neighbors, acquaintances, colleagues, and community members from across the island and none of them had yet heard that she was retiring.
“I started to get so melancholy,” she recalls, after having to repeat the news. “By the end of the day when I drove home, I was like, huh, you’re really doing this.”
Moran is not someone who took the obvious road. Born and raised in the Bronx, she moved to Long Island in 1972 to be closer to family. When her husband, Russ, earned a scholarship to law school in Chicago, they moved “lock, stock, and barrel” with their son and dog. Moran has been a teacher, the director of conferences for the Illinois Institute of Technology, and a technical editor for Dun & Bradstreet Publishing. When they moved back to New York, she was hired personally by Nobel Laureate Dr. James Watson at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. She attended law school, and co-founded Verdict Search, a legal research and writing service, with her husband Russ.
Filling big shoes
Lillian Barbash, the founder of the Islip Arts Council, was a legend. She and her philanthropist husband Maurice built the organization from scratch, establishing the council as a cultural anchor in the Town of Islip. When Barbash retired at age 80, she handed the reins to Moran.
“I had been doing a lot of volunteer work at the Islip Art Museum and I was active in the Town of Islip,” she says. “I was a known entity and that’s why I was hired to fill the big shoes of Lillian Barbash.”
Among the programs Moran inherited was the Free Philharmonic Concert in the Park, a beloved summer tradition that drew upwards of 10,000 music lovers. Families would plan their vacations around it, booking campsites at Heckscher State Park months in advance, packing picnics, blankets, and lawn chairs for the concert under the stars. Barbash had warned Moran that her phone would start ringing in January about the date of the event, and Moran confirms it did. For years, the Arts Council brought in the New York Philharmonic until rising costs made it unsustainable. Then Moran partnered with the Long Island Philharmonic and, most recently, Orchestra Long Island.
“Before my taking over leadership in 2008, the Islip Arts Council was primarily music. No dance, no theatre, no visual arts,” she says, but notes the affiliation with the Islip Arts Museum owned by the town. Moran envisioned something broader – an organization that could serve the whole community across every artistic discipline. “I basically took the Islip Arts Council in a whole new direction,” she says simply.
One of those directions was the founding of the School for Cultural Arts at the Museum. This ambitious program presented classes for the public in painting, drawing, writing, music and sewing. These classes continue to be offered at the IAC Gallery in the South Shore Mall, Bay Shore, NY.
A growing vision
For years, the Islip Arts Council was housed in historic Brookwood Hall, East Islip. After the pandemic when local government buildings closed, the South Shore Mall offered unexpected refuge. The Arts Council established a 2,300-square-foot gallery at the mall that draws walk-in traffic from residents who may not have found them in the former location. “It’s opened up a few different avenues for us,” Moran says.
The gallery hosts a full slate of exhibitions year-round, along with art classes and workshops for all ages, as well as community events and diverse cultural celebrations. They also frequently offer special programming partnering with F.R.E.E., an organization that works with people with developmental disabilities, and ADRC, which supports those with Alzheimer’s and cognitive decline.
A small independent bookstore run by the Long Island Authors Group rounds out the gallery space, showcasing the work of local authors.
Under Moran’s leadership, the Council’s musical programming grew in every direction. She added opera in historic homes and places of worship, jazz festivals, and incorporated popular music into the Summer Concert Series at Bayard Cutting Arboretum, while keeping the Winter Series classical.
Inspired by the success of the opera program, Moran envisioned Shakespeare in the Park. She partnered with Studio Theatre of Long Island, and since 2021 with funding from the county, they perform works of William Shakespeare in five different parks in the area as part of the Free Summer Arts in the Parks program.
“I arrange for all those locations and sound and everything and I love every minute of it. I was, after all, an English major and I love, love this,” Moran shares. “Going forward, I’d like to see Shakespeare in the Park with a children's angle.” Shakespeare in the Park has become one of her most cherished programs, rooted in a belief that the classical arts belong everywhere.
Of everything Moran has built over the years, she is most proud of the Teeny Awards. Modeled after the Tonys, the Teenys celebrate high school theatre productions across Suffolk County, recognizing student performers, directors, and behind-the-scenes contributors who rarely get their moment in the spotlight.
“I’d see these kids beginning as freshman being involved in a production,” she says, and recalls the year a sophomore won the top prize. “It was unheard of for a sophomore to win that kind of award. It was wonderful to see him win it,” she says warmly. “I loved the involvement with all the schools and seeing the kids. It was great.”
Turning the page
For all of her energy and dedication, even Moran has her limits. In November of last year, Moran underwent emergency open heart surgery.
“I went from being this unbelievably active human being to – I couldn’t drive for two months, I couldn’t do my normal job,” Moran says. “Life changed, for me as well as for the arts council.” This setback came only a few years after her husband Russ passed away, and it advanced the timeline of Moran’s departure from the Council.
In June 2025, Moran started the process of handing over the reins to her former assistant director, Linda Weingarten. For the past year, the "two Lindas" have been working side by side as they usher in a new chapter at the Islip Arts Council. Weingarten will bring her own vision to the role, and Moran welcomes that.
“Linda is fun and has great energy,” Moran says fondly. “She’s very clever and has a lot of different ideas.” The confidence she has in Weingarten is evident. “I want her to be as successful as possible,” she says. “I’ve watched her develop, not only as an artist, but as an administrator.”
Leading by example
Many who know her work would call Moran a trailblazer, but she reserves that title for Lillian Barbash. She would rather accept the moniker ‘role model.’
Moran has had several of her own role models. At the top of the list is her father, Joseph Giambelluca, an oil painter. He raised his daughter to see creativity as a birthright. When the nuns at her Catholic school tried to make her right-handed, he stood up for her saying, “My daughter is an artist. She writes with her left hand. She draws with her left hand. She is a creative human being. Do not stifle her creativity,” Moran recalls. Her father modeled strength and generosity and nurtured her art – it is perhaps no surprise that she has spent a lifetime doing the same for others.
Others include Frank Regnante, a longtime fundraising consultant and Rotary colleague who was influential in terms of philanthropy, fundraising, and development, and Dr. Peter Chiarulli, the dean who mentored her in Chicago and taught her about writing and how to present herself. Both men have since passed away, but their influence has not wavered.
Lillian Barbash was another inspiration. “She led with grace, charm and tenacity,” Moran says, “and I tried to do the same.”
Her next act
Moran has no shortage of plans for her next chapter. She has designed her own home, which is currently under construction. The new house will have a small art studio and she already has an easel.
“It was my father’s easel that he had since he was in art school and gave it to me with great love,” she says. “I hopefully will start painting again on a regular basis.”
If that weren't enough to look forward to, Moran recently welcomed a great-grandson into the family. “I’m really too young to be a great grandmother,” she says lightly. “But I’m very much looking forward to this.”
Moran plans to deepen her involvement with arts and music groups, and continue looking for funding opportunities that might benefit not just the Islip Arts Council, but the church, Rotary, and other community organizations she’s involved in as well. “I look forward to having the time to explore some things that I have not explored because I didn’t have the time to do my own thing,” she says. Moran credits her deep faith and lifelong friendships for keeping her motivated.
What she will miss most, she says, is the daily human interaction – greeting visitors at the gallery, telling them what the Arts Council does, and watching their eyes light up with interest. She loves talking to artists, musicians, colleagues, and friends in person.
She is careful to point out, however, that she is not disappearing. She’ll be available as a consultant, still attend events, and remain close to her Islip Arts Council family. “It’ll always have a place in my heart,” she says.
Her advice for others following in her footsteps: “Look forward, don’t look backward, and then make it your own way.” She suggests that future Arts Council members not disregard the past, and build on the value of its rich history.
Her contributions have not gone unrecognized. Last year she was named a Suffolk County Senior of the Year. “I’ve done a lot. I’ve brought a lot to the game. And I'm leaving a legacy,” she says. Though she’s stepping away, Moran wishes all the best for the Arts Council, which is now in its 52nd year. Her hope for the organization she tended all these years is “that it grows on its own and makes new roots.”
