The Capitol Ballet: 1960s Funding

1964

May

• The Capitol Ballet Company and school were awarded a $2000 [$18,197 in 2022] grant by the Philip M. Stern Foundation with the promise of an additional matching $2000 if they were able to raise $2000. Three of the school’s students were also awarded individual scholarships by George Balanchine from the Ford Foundation grant to ballet.

1966

May

• The school and company members received 36 scholarships by George Balanchine as part of the Ford Foundation grant administered by the School of American Ballet. They also received over $9000 from the Philip Stern Foundation, two grants totaling $6500 from the Agnes and Eugene Meyer Foundation and $4000 from Lincoln Kirstein. “The money has gone to build a boys’ bath and dressing room, hire a pianist and produce the new ‘Pocahontas’, to a score written by Elliott Carter in 1937.”

October

• The Capitol Ballet Guild of Washington was given $5000 [$42,727 in 2022] as part of the National Endowment for the Arts.

1967

• As part of a federal art subsidy Capitol Ballet Company received $2000 [$17,091 in 2022]. Inflation calculator

More about Philip M. Stern Foundation

Philip M. Stern, 66, a Washington philanthropist and author whose books included stinging criticisms of congressional campaign financing, the tax code, the legal profession and poverty amid the white marble monuments of Washington, died of brain cancer June 1 at George Washington University Hospital.

Mr. Stern was a man of the highest Establishment credentials, and independently wealthy, but he spent much of his life fighting the status quo. As director of family philanthropic foundations, he awarded grants to organizations and individuals trying to bring about social change. “I like to find out-of-the-way people who don’t have access to the foundation world,” Mr. Stern once said. “I also like to try inventing new ways of solving problems.”

Among the recipients of his foundation grants was Seymour Hersh, who was given money in 1969 to investigate reports of a massacre of South Vietnamese civilians by U.S. soldiers at the village of Mylai. Hersh’s stories on the massacre shocked the nation and the world. Other Stern grantees have included a group of students at Washington’s Eastern High School who used the money to organize their own classes in black history in the late 1960s and early 1970s; drug treatment centers; a switchboard for runaways; free medical clinics; and the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington.

Source:

The Washington Post: Philip M. Stern dies at 66

More about the Ford Foundation

The foundation was established January 15, 1936 in Michigan by Edsel Ford (president of the Ford Motor Company) and two other executives “to receive and administer funds for scientific, educational and charitable purposes, all for the public welfare.” During its early years, the foundation operated in Michigan under the leadership of Ford family members and their associates and supported the Henry Ford Hospital and the Henry Ford Museum and Greenfield Village, among other organizations.

After the deaths of Edsel Ford in 1943 and Henry Ford in 1947, the presidency of the foundation fell to Edsel’s eldest son, Henry Ford II. It quickly became clear that the foundation would become the largest philanthropic organization in the world. The board of trustees then commissioned the Gaither Study Committee to chart the foundation’s future. The committee, headed by California attorney H. Rowan Gaither, recommended that the foundation become an international philanthropic organization dedicated to the advancement of human welfare and “urged the foundation to focus on solving humankind’s most pressing problems, whatever they might be, rather than work in any particular field….” The report was endorsed by the foundation’s board of trustees, and they subsequently voted to move the foundation to New York City in 1953. The Ford Foundation’s first international field office opened in 1952 in New Delhi, India.

The board of directors decided to diversify the foundation’s portfolio and gradually divested itself of its substantial Ford Motor Company stock between 1955 and 1974. This divestiture allowed Ford Motor to become a public company. Finally, Henry Ford II resigned from his trustee’s role in a surprise move in December 1976. In his resignation letter, he cited his dissatisfaction with the foundation holding on to their old programs, large staff and what he saw as anti-capitalist undertones in the foundation’s work. In February 2019, Henry Ford III was elected to the Foundation’s Board of Trustees, becoming the first Ford family member to serve on the board since his grandfather resigned in 1976.

For many years, the foundation topped annual lists compiled by the Foundation Center of US foundations with the most assets and the highest annual giving. The foundation has fallen a few places in those lists in recent years, especially with the establishment of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in 2000. As of May 4, 2013, the foundation was second in terms of assets and tenth in terms of annual grant giving.

In November 2020, Dance Magazine’s Rachel Caldwell described the Ford Foundation as “an independent, nonprofit $13 billion social justice institution” that has “bequeathed millions in game-changing financial support to dance institutions such as Dance Theatre of Harlem and the School of American Ballet.”

The organization’s current president, Darren Walker, a gay, Black man from a working class family, has kept this tradition alive throughout his tenure with the institution.

The foundation describes their “America’s Cultural Treasures” initiative as one intended “to acknowledge and honor the diversity of artistic expression and excellence in America and provide critical funding to organizations that have made a significant impact on America’s cultural landscape, despite historically limited resources.”

Through this initiative, the foundation has given numerous grants to BIPOC companies, in Walker’s effort to “address racial and financial inequity in the arts.” Some of the Ford Foundation’s major grants for BIPOC companies include the $4 million that was awarded to New York’s Ballet Hispánico in 2020 and a $1 million grant for Dance Theatre of Harlem in 2006 (after the company and school had to close due to lack of funding in 2004). Arthur Mitchell also said that the Ford Foundation “played a significant role in the founding of DTH thirty-seven years ago.”

Sources:

Dance Magazine Chairman’s Award Honoree: Darren Walker, Dance Magazine
Felicidades, Ballet Hispánico, On Being Named One of America’s Cultural Treasures By Ford Foundation, Dance Enthusiast
Ford Foundation Awards $1 Million to Dance Theatre of Harlem, Philanthropy News Digest
FAQs: America’s Cultural Treasures, Ford Foundation
The Ford Foundation Wikipedia

More about the National Endowment for the Arts

The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) is an independent agency of the United States federal government that offers support and funding for projects exhibiting artistic excellence. It was created in 1965 as an independent agency of the federal government by an act of the U.S. Congress, signed by President Lyndon B. Johnson on September 29, 1965 (20 U.S.C. 951). The foundation consists of the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Federal Council on the Arts and the Humanities, and the Institute of Museum and Library Services.

The NEA has its offices in Washington, D.C. It was awarded Tony Honors for Excellence in Theatre in 1995, as well as the Special Tony Award in 2016. In 1985, the NEA won an honorary Oscar from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for its work with the American Film Institute in the identification, acquisition, restoration and preservation of historic films. In 2016 and again in 2017, the National Endowment for the Arts received Emmy nominations from the Television Academy in the Outstanding Short Form Nonfiction or Reality Series category.

Source:

National Endowment for the Arts, Wikipedia

More about the Agnes and Eugene Meyer Foundation

Agnes Meyer was a writer and vice president of The Washington Post who was active in social services and education. Born and raised in New York state, Meyer attended New York’s Barnard College and subsequently became the “first woman reporter ever hired by The New York Sun.” After her marriage to Eugene Meyer in 1910, she wrote avidly through World War II for The Washington Post. She established the Urban Service Corps in 1961 and the National Committee for Support of the Public School in 1962. She passed away in New York City at age 83 on September 2, 1970.

Eugene Meyer was a chairman and owner of The Washington Post and an international financier. He worked for the Federal Reserve Board and as a politician in Westchester. 

In addition to their donations to the Capitol Ballet, the Meyers’ foundation sponsored projects outside of the arts like “health research [and] rehabilitation of convicts.”

Sources:

The Washington Post, 15th May 1966, p. G8
Mrs. Agnes Meyer Dies at 83; Writer Active in Social Causes, The New York Times

More about the Regina and Milton Heymann Foundation