NEW YORK, NY, May 7, 2015––Carnegie Corporation of New York announced $3.6 million in grants today to fund education and enrichment programs in greater New York City. Eighteen cultural institutions will receive $200,000 each to be used toward their existing programs in the arts and sciences for students in kindergarten through twelfth grade.
The recipients are well-established institutions with distinguished education programs, including museums, libraries, and performing arts and science centers. The organizations are: American Museum of Natural History; Asia Society; Brooklyn Academy of Music; Carnegie Hall; Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum; Liberty Science Center; Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts; The Metropolitan Museum of Art; The Morgan Library & Museum; Museum of Modern Art; National September 11 Memorial & Museum; New Jersey Performing Arts Center; The New York Botanical Garden; New York Historical Society; The New York Public Library; Brooklyn Public Library; Queens Library; and Studio in a School.
“New York City, one of the cultural capitals of the United States, has the largest public school system in the nation. Carnegie Corporation is proud to support the city’s cultural institutions in order to enhance the curriculum of our public as well as private and parochial schools with the riches these museums, libraries, and centers possess,” said Vartan Gregorian, President of Carnegie Corporation of New York. “It speaks well of these organizations’ leaders that they have developed education programs to help students overcome deficiencies in the arts and sciences that our schools can’t provide due to financial factors.”
Gregorian noted that Carnegie Corporation’s founder, Andrew Carnegie, made New York City his beloved home and the headquarters for the foundation. Mr. Carnegie’s support of the area’s cultural institutions began as early as 1897 and included the construction of more than 60 libraries in the five boroughs, the establishment of the music hall now named Carnegie Hall, and the cofounding of The New York Botanical Garden. Today his Fifth Avenue mansion houses the Cooper Hewitt museum.
“The city is indeed the best classroom, and New York’s cultural institutions are critically important to developing curious, engaged, and innovative citizens of the future,” said Wendy Woon, the Museum of Modern Art’s Edward John Noble Deputy Director for Education. “This initiative will have enormous impact that will continue to be generative as students become lifelong learners who value the possibilities that the arts present in their lives.”
The one-time grants are funded as part of the Corporation’s 2015 Presidential Discretionary Grants.
About Carnegie Corporation of New York
Carnegie Corporation of New York was established in 1911 by Andrew Carnegie to promote the advancement and diffusion of knowledge and understanding. In keeping with this mandate, the Corporation's work focuses on the issues that Andrew Carnegie considered of paramount importance: international peace, the advancement of education and knowledge, and the strength of our democracy.
Photo Source from: Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum
