Rockefeller Expands Humanities Program
The Rockefeller Foundation has announced that it will expand its Humanities Fellowship program to include as host institutions “non-traditional settings” such as theatres, museums, orchestras and social service agencies.
The program, in existence since 1975, has annually aided scholars from all humanities disciplines “to advance the understanding of the modern world through the better understanding of the past or through the direct assessment of the present.” The program supports individual scholarship and involvement of scholars in enterprises likely to benefit the larger public.
Theatres and other institutions interested in applying to become residency sites should submit inquiries no later than Dec. 1, 1984 to the Rockefeller Foundation, Division of Arts and Humanities, 1133 Ave. of the Americas, New York, NY 10036. Final applications are due Mar. 1, 1985.
Cooperating host institutions currently include New York’s Poetry Center, the Smithsonian Institution, the Walker Arts Center of Minneapolis and several university-based programs. Interested scholars should request addresses of host institutions in order to obtain guidelines and application information directly.
Viva Volunteers
The Grantsmanship Center of Los Angeles will provide half-tuition scholarships to all volunteers, including board members, participating in any of its workshops in fundraising for the balance of 1984. The Center, which generally trains professional personnel, is offering the scholarships in recognition of the inability of most organizations to pay the tuition expenses of their volunteers.
In 1984, more than 250 workshops in all areas of fundraising have been conducted by the Center in some 75 cities throughout the U.S. For more information contact Eleanor Boba, Registrar, The Grantsmanship Center, 1031 South Grand Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90015; (800) 421-9512, or in California, Alaska or Hawaii, (213) 749-4721.
Briefly Noted
The Gannett Foundation has award a grant of $10,000 to the Arizona Theatre Company to subsidize reduced-price tickets to its production of Quilters. The foundation also gave $5,000 to Children’s Radio Theatre to support a children’s playwriting contest and $25,000 to GeVa Theatre for its relocatión into a former Naval Armory in downtown Rochester, N.Y.
Washington State’s Corporate Council for the Arts, an association of 350 companies, has approved grants of $1 million for arts organizations in 1984. Among the recipients of grants for general support are Seattle Repertory Theatre ($123,000), A Contemporary Theatre ($65,000) and The Empty Space ($25,000).
Two hundred business subscribers support The Old Globe Theatre with over $50,000 in ticket revenue. Businesses use their subscriptions to the Old Globe as gifts, for promotions, to entertain clients and to reward key employees…Citibank has made a $100,000 grant to the Negro Ensemble Company to support a touring revival of Lonne Elder’s Ceremonies in Dark Old Men.
The William and Mary Greve Foundation has provided a grant to Shakespeare & Company to co-produce The Custom of the Country, a play about the life and works of novelist Edith Wharton. It will be staged at the Mount in Lenox, Mass., the mansion built by Wharton at the turn-of-the-century…The League of Chicago Theatres has been awarded a $200,000 grant from the Consolidated Foods Foundation to establish and promote “Dial…Theatre,” centralized box office phone system for the League’s small and mid-sized member theatre companies. “Dial…Theatre,” allows the public to call and charge theatre tickets for advance performances at more than 40 theatres in metropolitan Chicago.
Alaska Repertory Theatre more than matched an $800,000 challenge grant issued last year by the State of Alaska by increasing earned income generated from season and individual ticket sales, touring fees and contributions. Private donations for fiscal year 1984 will total almost $240,000 in cash and $30,000 in in-kind contributions. Monies raised from the private sector will show an almost 50 percent increase over last year.
The Cleveland Play House, Washington, D.C.’s Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and Maryland’s Wye Mills Theatre received $25,000, $15,000 and $50,000 respectively from the Bingham Foundation. The Cleveland Play House will add funds to its capital drive; the Kennedy Center has commissioned a new opera or musical theatre piece for young people, and Wye Mills Theatre established a restricted endowment fund.
Theatre Communications Group’s Hispanic Translation Project, designed to promote the translation and production of Hispanic plays, received a $2,500 grant from the New York State Council on the Arts Literature Program. TCG also received a $1,000 first-time grant from Chevron USA for support of its ongoing programs and services.
