Issue Project Room(IPR) has a brand new Executive Director, and that’s good news for Brooklyn’s innovative and experimental music and performance space that lost its founding director, Suzanne Fiol, to cancer last October.

This week the board of IPR announced the appointment of Ed Patuto as the new Executive Director for the organization. Patuto, who is moving back to Brooklyn from Los Angeles, will begin his official duties at ISSUE on November 1, 2010.

” I am honored to have the opportunity to advance Suzanne’s vision for experimental arts and help build a new home for ISSUE at 110 Livingston in Brooklyn,” said Patuto in ISSUE’s press release.

IPR is in the midst of an intensive $2.5 million capital campaign that will enable the experimental art space to move into large new quarters at 110 Livingston Street. Currently they are located at the American Can Factory on Third Street and Third Avenue in Park Slope/Gowanus.  The group has already raised  $1.2 million.

According to his bio (provided by IPR), Patuto has 20 years experience in fund-raising for artistic institutions, an incredibly important skill in these cash-strapped times. Most recently he was Co-Founder/Director of VOLUME, “a CA-based curatorial catalyst for interdisciplinary new media work concentrating on the nexus of music and visual arts practices ranging from the experimental to popular culture.”

He has also worked as development director for the Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles and the Montalvo Arts Center and has a long list of credits at a host of other arts institutions and programs.