The Wallace Foundation, formed from the legacy of Dewitt and Lila Acheson Wallace, has supported the work of arts organizations to build participation in the arts for more than a decade. The Boston Foundation and the Massachusetts Cultural Council have partnered with the Wallace Foundation to extend Wallace funding and research to Boston organizations and to increase participation in the arts. 

The Wallace Foundation made multi-year Excellence Awards to seven Boston arts organizations in October of 2006 and made additional funds available through the Boston Foundation to engage other local arts nonprofits in building arts engagement.  The Boston organizations receiving Excellence Awards are the Museum of the Fine Arts, the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the Boston Lyric Opera, From the Top, the Huntington Theatre Company, the Institute of Contemporary Art and the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. 

The Boston Foundation and the Massachusetts Cultural Council will conduct a grants process to select up to 10 additional organizations from the Boston area to participate in a series of learning meetings and funding opportunities targeted at increasing their audiences.  In addition, the funders will hold public forums to disseminate learning more broadly, beyond those that receive individual awards. 

The Wallace Foundation is taking a city-based approach to its arts funding to help improve arts participation across a whole community.  Wallace chose Boston as one of the first sites for this new effort because of the city’s high concentration and variety of arts organizations and because of the congruence of these grants with Wallace’s multi-year support of Boston After School & Beyond to improve city-wide delivery of high-quality out-of-school-time programming to children who need it most.

The Wallace Foundation is an independent, New York-based national foundation dedicated to supporting and sharing effective ideas and practices that expand learning and enrichment opportunities for all people.  Its three current objectives are: strengthening education leadership to improve student achievement; enhancing out-of-school learning opportunities; and building appreciation and demand for the arts.  More information and research on these and other related topics can be found at The Wallace Foundation Knowledge Center at www.wallacefoundation.org or by calling (212) 251-9810. 

The Massachusetts Cultural Council promotes excellence, access, education and diversity in the arts, humanities and interpretive sciences, in order to improve the quality of life for all Massachusetts residents and contribute to the economic vitality of our communities.  The Council is committed to building a central place for the arts, sciences and humanities in the everyday lives of communities across the Commonwealth, and pursues its mission through a combination of grant programs, partnerships and services for nonprofit cultural organizations, schools, communities and individual artists.  For more information visit www.massculturalcouncil.org or call (617) 727-3668. 

Contact:
Ann McQueen
Senior Program Officer
ann.mcqueen@tbf.org
(617) 338-2773