PUBLICATIONS Inside Illinois Vol. 26, No. 2, July 20, 2006

Krannert Center receives major grant from Duke Foundation

The UI’s Krannert Center for the Performing Arts is one of only three university-based performing arts presenters in the nation selected to receive major funding through a new initiative of the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation.

The center will receive $1,125,000 over three years from the foundation through its Leading College and University Presenters Program. The program is part of the foundation’s new College and University Presenters Program, designed to encourage innovative projects that integrate the performing arts into academic life and the surrounding community.

“I could not be more pleased, nor more grateful,” said Krannert Center director Mike Ross upon learning that the center had received the funding.

“This grant is a powerful endorsement of the pathway Krannert Center has been embarked on in recent years, and will propel us vigorously forward along this pathway in the next set of years ahead,” Ross said. “It is also a strong vote of confidence in the quality and vision of leadership at Illinois and in the network of relationships the center enjoys across campus and in the community.

“Furthermore, because of the highly competitive nature of the grant program, the recognition that accompanies this award brings the center, the university and Champaign-Urbana into the consciousness of the elite field of national arts funders in a highly focused manner and opens new doors for future support of the center’s mission.”

Also receiving grants from the foundation were the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center at Maryland (University of Maryland), and the University Musical Society (University of Michigan).

The grant to Krannert Center includes $375,000 for artistic programming and $750,000 for endowment purposes. Award recipients are required to match the foundation’s artistic programming support on a one-to-one basis and endowment funds at two to one. Once established, the endowment will generate funding dedicated to supporting artistic programs over the long term.

According to a foundation news release, Krannert Center was selected for the award following a nine-month exploration of qualified candidates, which included surveying about 100 college- and university-based performing arts presenters, provosts and academics, as well as stand-alone presenters, artists and other stakeholders.

In its grant application, Krannert Center listed three potential funding priorities:

• Strengthening the center’s emerging role as a uniquely innovative environment for the creation of boundary-pushing new work by established and emerging artists.
• Expanding and deepening university student engagement with an understanding of diverse cultural expressions within both domestic and global contexts.
• Extending and strengthening the center’s collaborative/interdisciplinary relationships with key units across campus to develop new co-creative, multi-domain initiatives.
  

Chancellor Richard Herman hailed the center’s recent and ongoing initiatives in those areas as “some of the most transformational work being done here at Illinois.”

“The center under Mike Ross has earned its place in the constellation of creativity for which Illinois is rightly known,” Herman said.

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