Baltimore Office of Promotion and the Arts CEO Bill Gilmore is resigning his position as head of the organization after 37 years spent serving the city.

“It has been an honor and a pleasure to work with Team BOPA, the most outstanding and dedicated staff on planet Earth,” Gilmore said in a release sent out today. “The work that we have accomplished together has had a profound, long lasting and positive effect on the City of Baltimore.”

BOPA has developed a wide range of festive programming highlighting Baltimore’s rich arts scene under Gilmore’s leadership. He joined the organization as a part-time graphic designer in 1980 and rose through the ranks to become art director, promotions director and deputy director before former Mayor Kurt Schmoke appointed him to be its director and CEO.

Gilmore helped craft and broaden the Artscape festival, which began two years after he joined, as well as the Baltimore Farmers’ Market & Bazaar, the Baltimore Book Festival, Free Fall Baltimore, regular holiday events on

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