Wallace Excellence Awards
What we did
The arts generate a range of benefits for people and society. They include everything from bringing individuals pleasure and expanding their horizons to helping communities build stronger social bonds. Throughout the U.S., however, arts organizations face a changing and challenging landscape.
The Wallace Excellence Awards initiative was a multi-year effort, concluded in 2014, that sought to respond to this. It supported audience-building projects at 54 visual and performing arts organizations in six cities around the country. They tested a variety of ways to expand, diversify, and more deeply engage their audiences.
What we learned
Market research expert Bob Harlow produced case studies of the work of 10 of the 54 arts organizations. He found a kaleidoscope of projects. They ranged from staging child-friendly versions of operas (to try to cultivate a new generation of opera lovers) to working with community groups (to find ways to welcome all members of a changing, diverse neighborhood to a local arts school). Harlow found cross-cutting themes in the work. A key one: the need for arts organization to pinpoint the barriers keeping potential audience members away.
Our Grantee Partners
Alonzo King LINES Ballet
Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts
Arden Theatre Company
Beverly Arts Center
Black Ensemble Theater
Boston Foundation
Boston Lyric Opera
Boston Symphony Orchestra
Center for Asian American Media
The Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia
Chicago Community Trust
Chicago Sinfonietta
The Clay Studio
The Contemporary Jewish Museum
Corporation of the Fine Arts Museums
Experience Music Project/Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame
Fleisher Art Memorial
From the Top
Garfield Park Conservatory Alliance
Huntington Theatre Company
Hyde Park Art Center
The Institute of Contemporary Art
Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum
Macphail Center for Music
Merit School of Music
Minneapolis Institute of Art
Minnesota Opera
Minnesota Orchestra
Mixed Blood Theatre Company
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Music of the Baroque
Northern Clay Center
ODC/Oberlin Dance Collective
On the Boards
One Reel
Opera Company of Philadelphia
Ordway Center for the Performing Arts
Pacific Northwest Ballet
The Philadelphia Foundation
Philadelphia Live Arts Festival & Philly Fringe / Philadelphia Fringe Festival
The Philadelphia Orchestra Association
Philadelphia Theatre Company
The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra Society
San Francisco Foundation
San Francisco Girls Chorus
San Francisco Jazz Organization (SFJAZZ)
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
San Francisco Opera / San Francisco Opera Association
Seattle Art Museum
Seattle Opera
Seattle Repertory Theatre
Seattle Youth Symphony Orchestras
SIFF
Steppenwolf Theatre Company
Victory Gardens Theater
The Wilma Theater
World Arts West
Yerba Buena Center for the Arts
Key Studies
