Grants from The Mary Duke Biddle Foundation have had an immeasurable impact not only on the breadth of grantee activities, but also in the lives of those served by these groups. In 2008, The Mary Duke Biddle Foundation awarded $229,010.00 to eighty-eight worthwhile projects in New York. Grants to youth-oriented programs introduced hundreds of children to the enriching nature of the arts, while nurturing an appreciation for cultural diversity. Grants to organizations that serve special-needs populations provided life-skills training and opportunities for creative self-expression. And grants to arts and cultural organizations helped support programs that explore and celebrate the complexity of our shared humanity.

Molière endures: Robin Leslie Brown in Pearl Resident Acting Company’s presentation of Tartuffe. Gregory Costanzo.

The Foundation made a number of grants to organizations that we have collaborated with in the past. The Ballet Theater Foundation received support for its ABT II initiative, which prepares exceptional young dancers for careers as professional dancers, choreographers, or composers. The twelve-person company also serves an educational outreach function; in its fourteen year history, ABT II has performed for more than 20,000 school children across the country. Similarly, the Concert Artists Guild (CAG) provides professional development services for young musicians identified through its annual international competition. CAG artists receive comprehensive management oversight, and opportunities to perform live through CAGs annual performance series. And a grant to the Cunningham Dance Foundation helped fund Mondays With Merce, an online video program that allows Internet viewers to see the legendary choreographer lead his weekly class, supplemented by additional interviews and archival footage that inform the creative process.

The Boys and Girls Harbor, Inc., a perennial grant recipient, was founded by Mary Duke Biddle’s nephew, Anthony "Tony" Duke in 1937. The multiservice educational youth agency now serves more than 6,000 children and families living in East and Central Harlem every year. A grant to the organization’s arts branch, the Harbor Conservatory for the Performing Arts, helped support music, dance, and theater classes that blend the cultural vibrancy of East Harlem with larger trends and influences in the performing arts.

Play it forward: Harbor Conservatory fuses cultural and classical expression. Courtesy Harbor Conservatory.

Additional grants for educational outreach included one to the Paul Taylor Dance Foundation Inc. for Taylor 2, the six-dancer touring group that in 2008 performed and led workshops at twenty-two locations, including the famed Joyce Theater in New York.

Through the Philharmonic Symphony Society of New York’s School Partnership Program, classroom teachers and their students were able to attend live performances, compose original music, acquire listening and performance skills, and enhance their musical literacy.

Collaboration: Participants at Fresh Art painting workshop. Jayne Holsinger.

A grant to the Pearl Theater Company supported the Classics in the Classroom initiative, introducing hundreds of high school students to stage works by such iconic dramatists as Shakespeare, Sophocles, Ibsen, and Chekhov. To provide a distaff perspective, Women’s Project & Productions presented the series "Ten Centuries of Women Playwrights Arts and Literacy Education Program," which includes a curricular component to teach script reading, playwriting, and acting to improve literacy and to promote greater awareness of women’s historic contributions to the theater. A Foundation grant helped fund student matinees of the project’s main stage productions.

The Foundation continues to support a range of initiatives for at-risk and special-needs populations. A grant to the Manhattan New Music Project, which integrates the arts into classrooms in New York’s five boroughs, helped launch the "Music Cre8tor Outreach Program," an interactive music composition device particularly suitable for the physically and cognitively challenged. Using movement sensors attached to a person’s body, the program allows users to generate new music through motion. To date, the Music Cre8tor has been well received among special-education students in middle and high school, and proven effective at engaging students across the spectrum of mobility and cognitive capabilities. Other initiatives for this community include therapeutic horseback riding for the mentally and physically challenged, a drop-out prevention program for high school students with learning or emotional disabilities, and art therapy and proficiency training for the blind.

We also partner with galleries and museums to present exhibits that explore the singular contributions of influential artists. A Foundation grant to the National Academy of Design, an honorary society of American artists, helped put together an exhibit of works by Magical Realism painter George Tooker. The artist’s first museum retrospective in three decades, the exhibit comprises dozens of drawings and paintings Tooker made since 1945, and provides a sweeping display of his thematic progression from themes of alienation, despair, aging, and death to those that reveal a more cautiously optimistic view of life.

On the occasion of the fortieth anniversary of the Dance Theater of Harlem, the Foundation awarded the venerable organization two grants: one to commemorate the four-decade legacy of the group, which includes the retirement of co-founder Arthur Mitchell, the first African-American male dancer to become a permanent member of a major ballet company; and the second, to bolster the company’s presence in the marketplace. Among those efforts are a newly launched, nine-state national tour by the Dance Theatre of Harlem Ensemble, and a model K-12 arts education curriculum in New York City Public Schools.