Co-Chaired by Dr. Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Lupita Nyong’o, and Wendell Pierce, Campaign Will Make Harlem Stage an Enduring American Cultural Institution at a Time of Precarity for the Performing Arts
Pat Cruz, the Artistic Director and CEO of Harlem Stage, announced today that the organization has embarked on the public phase of The Campaign for Harlem Stage, a $25 million fundraising initiative to secure the institution’s long-term future and scale-up its indispensable work. $15.2 million has been secured to date. World-renowned historian and documentarian Dr. Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Academy Award-winning actress and producer Lupita Nyong’o, and the acclaimed actor and civic leader Wendell Pierce are Honorary Co-Chairs of the campaign, which will underwrite the development of new work through Harlem Stage’s WaterWorks commissioning program, the expansion of the institution’s presenting work, the strengthening of its education and community engagement activities in Harlem, and strategic investments in its facilities.
Pat Cruz said, “As our field struggles with the lasting effects of the COVID-19 pandemic—and with underlying problems brought into plain view by it—Harlem Stage is seizing the moment to fortify and expand, rather than contract, in our support of extraordinary artists of color. When we conceived The Campaign for Harlem Stage, we set an ambitious goal of $25 million in five years, and we have already raised over $15 million in just two. We’re profoundly energized to be inaugurating our 40th anniversary season on the heels of this accomplishment. It’s a demonstration that, over the course of Harlem Stage’s history, we have built the necessary support among artists, funders, fellow arts organizations, and friends to cement our permanence.”
Harlem Stage was founded in 1983—originally as Aaron Davis Hall, the performing arts center on the campus of The City College of New York. The organization was created at a time when there were few opportunities for Black performing artists to create and present original works, and when, after the recession in the late 1970s, funding for arts education programming had been decimated. Harlem Stage’s board and leadership set out to address these disparities. In 1998, the board recruited Pat Cruz as Executive Director, a position in which she has provided inspired creative and executive leadership of the organization for 25 years. Between 2002 and 2006, the newly rebranded Harlem Stage raised more than $27 million through a capital campaign, The Gatehouse Campaign, to fund the renovation of a new permanent home for Harlem Stage. The Gatehouse was a trailblazing renovation project that employed the creative design innovations of “adaptive reuse” and converted this beautiful late 19th-century building, once a gatehouse of New York’s Croton Aqueduct System, into an intimate, state-of-the-art performance space and home for the institution’s myriad mission-driven activities.
Recognizing that Harlem Stage needed to refresh its vision for the future and create the foundation for a more sustainable organization, the Board and Executive Director in 2019 initiated a strategic planning process to make Harlem Stage a more robust, more innovative, and intentionally experimental institution. The Campaign for Harlem Stage comprises two phases: a “Quiet Phase” designed to stimulate major gifts toward program development, strengthen Harlem Stage’s investment in commissioning, improve its facilities, and create a set of reserve funds to assure the organization’s long-term sustainability. The Campaign has received leadership support from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, The Ford Foundation, The Howard Gilman Foundation, the Citi Foundation, the Thompson Family Foundation, the Charles and Lucille King Family Foundation, and Bloomberg Philanthropies, among others. Through the Quiet Phase of the Campaign, Harlem Stage also received major grant commitments from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs and the New York State Council on the Arts to address critical renovation and enhancement projects at the Gatehouse.
The “Public Phase” of the Campaign will further strengthen Harlem Stage’s WaterWorks commissioning program for emerging and established performing artists of color. This phase will also direct resources to Harlem Stage’s Education and Community Engagement programs, especially its enormously successful Fellowship and Internship Programs, which seek to create greater diversity in the field of arts administration. Finally, during this phase, Harlem Stage will seek underwriting support for its digital programming and its efforts to expand its reach through collaborations with regional and national performing arts partners.
A remarkable Campaign Committee has been assembled to guide this important initiative. In addition to Gates, Nyong’o, and Pierce as Honorary Co-Chairs, two members of the Harlem Stage Board of Directors are serving as the Campaign’s Working Chairs: Angela Glover Blackwell, the acclaimed activist and Founder of PolicyLink, the nation’s leading organization advocating for the development of equitable policy; and Mark Thomas, Strategic Account Executive with Johnson Controls International. The Campaign Committee includes Harlem Stage Board members and New York cultural and business leaders: Courtney F. Lee-Mitchell, Tamara Tunie, Jamila Ponton Bragg, Carl Hancock Rux, Stanley E. Grayson, and Dan Osheyack.
Dr. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. remarked, “For too long, artists of color were denied the opportunities and support they deserved. Harlem Stage is a bright beacon of light—it has created a space for visionary artists of color to be seen, to be heard, and to be supported in a community with other accomplished artists of color. Through their imaginative performances on stage and their urgent call for racial and social justice, they transform us.”
Lupita Nyong’o added, “Harlem Stage is more than a performance venue for emerging and established artists of color. It is an artistic and cultural community where artists can express themselves and collaborate to create new and imaginative work, giving voice to the call for social and racial justice in our society. Harlem Stage lives out its mission through its education work and engagement with the local community, exposing young people to the wonders of artistic expression and to their role in the ongoing global struggle for social and racial justice. I am honored to play a role in advancing Harlem Stage’s dynamic vision.”
Wendell Pierce said, “A performing artist of color has an important role to play in our society—a society where there are no limits to the reach of artistic expression. We are also, sadly, a society with great disparities when it comes to social and racial justice. The artist’s voice, what they choose to communicate, is rarely spontaneous—it is informed by a deeply thoughtful process, nurtured, and cultivated on a bed rich with lived experience in communion with other artists. As an artist and activist, I have a deep appreciation for the unique role that Harlem Stage plays, providing the platform—with commissioning and performing opportunities that serve to strengthen their voice and their perspective—in pursuit of a society that values equality, fairness, and justice.”
For its 40th anniversary, Harlem Stage has engaged artists with whom the organization has, through four decades, cultivated lasting relationships, to in turn champion visionary emerging artists of color they admire, offering a platform and building relationships for the institution’s future. Beginning with an anniversary kickoff concert, On & On: José James Sings Badu, September 14 at Bryant Park, the season features new works and guest-curated programs by visionary artists and Harlem Stage alumni including Bill T. Jones, Ronald K. Brown, Camille A. Brown, nora chipaumire, Jason Moran, Abdullah Ibrahim, Vijay Iyer, Stew, Craig Harris, Tamar-kali, Carl Hancock Rux, Ambrose Akinmusire, george emilio sanchez, and many more. For a complete schedule, please visit harlemstage.org/events.
About Harlem Stage
Harlem Stage is the performing arts center that bridges Harlem’s cultural legacy to contemporary artists of color and dares to provide the artistic freedom that gives birth to new ideas. For 40 years, the organization’s singular mission has been to perpetuate and celebrate the unique and diverse artistic legacy of Harlem and the indelible impression it has made on American culture. Harlem Stage provides opportunity, commissioning, and support for visionary artists of color, makes performances easily accessible to all audiences, and introduces children to the rich diversity, excitement, and inspiration of the performing arts.
Harlem Stage fulfills its mission through commissioning, incubating, and presenting innovative and vital work that responds to the historical and contemporary conditions that shape our lives and the communities the organization serves.
With a long-standing tradition of supporting artists and organizations around the corner and across the globe, Harlem Stage boasts such legendary artists as Harry Belafonte, Max Roach, Sekou Sundiata, Abbey Lincoln, Sonia Sanchez, Eddie Palmieri, Maya Angelou, and Tito Puente, as well as contemporary artists like Maimouna Youssef aka Mumu Fresh, Jason “Timbuktu” Diakité, Christian Scott “Chief Adjuah,” Tamar-kali, Vijay Iyer, Mike Ladd, Meshell Ndegeocello, Jason Moran, José James, Craig Harris, Nona Hendryx, Bill T. Jones, and more. Harlem Stage’s education programs serve over 2,300 New York City school children each year.
The New York Times has saluted Harlem Stage as “an invaluable incubator of talent” and it has been hailed as an organization still unafraid to take risks. Harlem Stage’s investment in this visionary talent is often awarded in the early stages of many artists’ careers, and the organization proudly celebrates their increasing success. Five members of its artist family have joined the ranks of MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship awardees: Kyle Abraham (2013), Vijay Iyer (2013), Jason Moran (2010), Bill T. Jones (1994), and Cecil Taylor (1991). Harlem Stage is a winner of the Association of Performing Arts Professionals’ William Dawson Award for Programming Excellence and Sustained Achievement in Programming.
For more information, please contact Blake Zidell and Nora Lyons at Blake Zidell & Associates: 917.572.2493, blake@blakezidell.com and nora@blakezidell.com