The Foundation has had a longstanding interest in the arts, reflecting Benjamin Altman’s personal commitment and our belief in the essential role that cultural engagement and the arts play in enriching the lives of New Yorkers and creating new avenues of exploration and opportunity for the city’s young people. Given our particular focus on issues of access and inclusion, the Foundation invests in organizations, programs, and projects that achieve results aligned with the objectives outlined below. As a general rule, the programs that we support take place outside of the public schools. Please note that the "Results Sought" reflect the specific outcomes of interest to us.

Promote access to arts and culture for all New Yorkers, with a special focus on people from underserved communities

Results Sought:

  1. Increase sustained engagement and participation of underserved populations in high-quality programming at established arts and cultural organizations
  2. Strengthen the arts infrastructure in the city and build capacity at critical junctures for organizations providing high-quality arts and cultural programming
Grants 2016

The 52nd Street Project, Inc.
$35,000
To build fundraising, marketing, and programming capacity

American Museum of Natural History
$100,000 (over two years)
To provide capacity building support for the Museum’s Education Department in preparation for the new Gilder Center for Science, Education and Innovation, scheduled to open in 2020

Amigos del Museo del Barrio, Inc.
$50,000
To provide capacity building support for El Museo's education programs, including the further implementation of the new cross-program initiative, The Curious Life

ArtsConnection, Inc.
$25,000
To help support Anticipating and Managing Organizational Change, ArtsConnection's strategic planning process

ArtsConnection, Inc.
$35,000
To help support the Take 5 and Teen Reviewers and Critics (TRaC) programs

Ballet Hispanico of New York, Inc.
$25,000
For general operating support and as a final grant

Ballet Tech Foundation, Inc.
$35,000
To help support citywide auditions for public elementary school children and provide tuition-free training, from beginner- to pre-professional-level, for 675 students from underserved backgrounds

Bronx Children's Museum
$50,000
To help provide capacity building funds to continue the development of the Bronx Children's Museum through its pre-launch stage

The Bronx Museum of the Arts
$100,000 (over two years)
To help upgrade and integrate the Bronx Museum's digital technologies

Brooklyn Academy of Music, Inc.
$175,000 (over two years)
To help create an effective "BAM Virtual Season" distance-learning program and enhance BAM's online study guides for K-12 teachers

The Center for Arts Education, Inc.
$150,000 (over two years)
To help develop and launch ArtsEdMap, an easy-to-use, multi-lingual mapping tool, designed to provide access to New York City public schools’ arts-in-education data and information; and toward the first phase of a collective impact initiative to expand arts learning in one school district in Central Brooklyn

Columbia University in the City of New York/Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Art Gallery
$24,000 (over fifteen months)
To renew capacity building support to create a network of leading Manhattanville artists and community stakeholders and develop and pilot community-based arts and educational programming for the Wallach Gallery's new West Harlem location

Cool Culture, Inc.
$68,000 (over two years)
To help support capacity-building activities to refine core competencies for Cool Culture staff, create new performance evaluation tools, and launch a professional development series to further integrate leadership development, outcomes-based thinking and collaboration across departments into the organization’s culture and practice

Friends of the High Line, Inc.
$50,000
To provide capacity building support for its Community Programs and outreach efforts to engage its neighbors

Gina Gibney Dance
$100,000 (over two years)
To provide capacity building support for a Marketing, Data and Transaction Initiative that will align institutional identity and streamline data collection and financial transaction systems to support fundraising efforts and financial and operational management of classes, rentals, programs and performances

International Center of Photography
$50,000
To support need-based scholarships and the retention and advancement of students receiving these scholarships within the Teen Academy and Imagemakers programs, and to help support early-stage planning and exploration of community programs in and around the neighborhood of ICP's new museum space on the Bowery

Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, Inc.
$50,000
To help support Phase 3 of the Lincoln Center Local: Free Screenings, designed to bring digitally streamed Lincoln Center performance content to library branches in all five boroughs of New York City

The Metropolitan Museum of Art
$150,000 (over three years)
To help bring high-quality arts and cultural activities to underserved P-12 NYC students by training educators across disciplines, integrating new training strategies, and documenting changes in classroom practice

The New York Botanical Garden
$200,000 (over three years)
To help support the Children's Education program

NYC Salt, Inc.
$25,000
To provide capacity building support for long-term sustainability and growth in order to connect more low-income, immigrant NYC youth to high-quality pre-professional arts instruction and post-secondary and career opportunities

Orchestra of St. Luke's/St. Luke's Chamber Ensemble, Inc.
$35,000
To help support the growth and programming of the Youth Orchestra of St. Luke's

Park Avenue Armory
$150,000 (over two years)
To provide capacity building support for the execution and expansion of complex unconventional “only at the Armory” productions and programming

Pratt Institute
$35,000
To support the capacity building efforts of Pratt’s Center for Art, Design, and Community Engagement K-12 as it works to increase access to art and design education for young people from underserved communities and evaluate the impact of those efforts

Queens Museum of Art (dba Queens Museum)
$100,000
To help support the Art and Literacy Program for New New Yorkers

Sphinx Organization, Inc.
$25,000 (over eighteen months)
To provide a planning grant to support and grow the capacity and sustainability of the Sphinx Organization's New York partnerships, programming, and impact

The Studio Museum in Harlem
$200,000 (over two years)
To help revitalize the Museum’s technology infrastructure and website with the goal of strengthening communications, content delivery, and audience engagement as the Museum prepares for the temporary re-siting of its programming (the InHARLEM project) and the creation of its new building

Third Street Music School Settlement
$30,000
To develop and launch a comprehensive Sound Engineering and Production program offering students a vital new resource to enhance the production, learning, and sharing of music

Promote positive youth development among underserved youth through engagement in arts, cultural, and other unique programs that provide sequential opportunities to participate over an extended period of time.

Results Sought:

  1. Significantly increase mastery of program-specific competencies and developmentally appropriate life skills
  2. Prepare participants to transition successfully to post-secondary and/or professional opportunities, including employment in the creative economy
Grants 2016

Brooklyn Youth Chorus Academy, Inc.
$150,000 (over two years)
To support the Choral Music Education and Performance Program and launch a School Management and Communications Initiative

Center for Family Life in Sunset Park
$50,000
To help support positive growth and the development of underserved youth in Sunset Park through the acquisition of pre-professional arts skills in the Life Lines Community Arts Project afterschool and summer arts program

The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art
$50,000
To support the Saturday and Outreach Programs for New York City high school students

Downtown Community Television Center, Inc.
$90,000 (over two years)
To support DCTV's free long-term intensive media arts training for underserved NYC youth

Groundswell Community Mural Project, Inc.
$30,000
To help support afterschool programs and summer intensives, which provide underserved and economically disadvantaged youth the opportunity to create public art within their communities and develop 21st century skills

Harlem RBI, Inc. dba DREAM
$75,000
To continue the organization's services in East Harlem and the South Bronx, including efforts to strengthen its high-school and college access programming

Hudson River Community Sailing
$30,000
To strengthen engagement in and outcomes from its Youth Development Programs by building counseling capacity

Jazz at Lincoln Center, Inc.
$75,000
To help support the Middle School Jazz Academy

New Heights Youth, Inc.
$40,000
To help support College Bound, a year-round high school and college preparatory program

Peter Westbrook Foundation, Inc.
$35,000
To help support fencing and academic enrichment programs

Queens Council on the Arts, Inc.
$50,000 (over two years)
To help support the High School to Art School (HS2AS) initiative

Row New York, Inc.
$120,000 (over two years)
To provide general operating support for rowing and academic programs in New York City

Woodlawn Conservancy, Inc.
$80,000 (over two years)
To help support the Woodlawn Cemetery training program in stone masonry and historic preservation

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