In recognition of the arts' contribution to the health, vitality and development of our communities, MetLife Foundation and MetLife provide grants to a variety of cultural organizations throughout the country. Support is emphasized for projects with large and diverse audiences that help promote greater understanding among different cultures. In addition, grants are made for arts education initiatives that contribute to the development of young people.
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| ARTS EDUCATION |
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| The arts contribute to the creative and overall development of young people. Arts education programs play a vital role in developing future audiences and building healthy communities. Since 1990, MetLife and MetLife Foundation have contributed over $35 million to help ensure that children have the opportunity to make the arts part of their lives. Through collaboration with national and regional organizations, grants are made to support sustained in-school arts education programs benefiting public school students and after-school youth art initiatives. Partnerships between arts groups and public schools and youth-serving organizations are emphasized. Each year, over 1 million children participate in arts activities supported by the Foundation. Among the current grantees are Young Audiences, VSA arts, National Guild of Community Schools of the Arts, Studio in a School and ArtsConnection. |
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| AWARDS FOR CULTURAL EXCELLENCE |
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| To encourage innovation and promote best practices in cultural programming, MetLife Foundation sponsors several national cultural awards programs, including: |
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The MetLife Foundation and Association of Children’s Museums Promising Practices Award recognizes program excellence at children's museums. In 2003, the program commemorated its fifth anniversary with a monograph titled "Profiles of Promising Practices." The publication highlights all the winning projects during the first five years of the Award program. (For more information on the program, please visit ACM’s Web site .) |
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The MetLife Awards for Excellence in Community Engagement is offered in a partnership with the American Symphony Orchestra League to honor outstanding work in the emerging field of community engagement and highlight programs that can serve as models for other orchestras of all sizes. Past winners include Santa Rosa Symphony (CA), Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, American Composers Orchestra and New Mexico Symphony Orchestra. (For more information on the program, visit ASOL’s Web site)
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| The Nuestras Voces (Our Voices) Playwriting Competition, offered through the Repertorio Espanol , encourages upcoming playwrights and the development of new plays, in either Spanish or English, which focus on the Hispanic experience in the United States. The Grand Prize winning play receives mainstage performances around the country, and other winners receive staged readings. |
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| PUBLIC BROADCASTING |
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| MetLife is proud to be the lead corporate sponsor of Live From Lincoln Center. The Emmy and Peabody Award-winning series, which features the finest in performing arts, is seen on about 300 PBS stations in all 50 states. MetLife was one of the original funders of the Lincoln Center in the 1950s, and MetLife and the Foundation have continued to lend support to the Center and a number of its constituents throughout the years. For information on future broadcasts, check Live From Lincoln Center’s Web site and your local listings for program time and station in your area. |
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| TRAVELING ARTS PROGRAM |
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| To making the arts accessible to wide and diverse audiences, the Traveling Arts Program supports national tours of exhibits and performing arts groups. MetLife Foundation-sponsored traveling exhibits and performance companies visit over 200 cities across the country annually. |
Traveling Exhibitions
MetLife Foundation provides grants to support traveling exhibitions to help museums bring quality exhibits to broader audiences. These exhibits share cultural treasures from different parts of the country and help bring the arts to communities that otherwise might not have the opportunity to enjoy them.
The following are some of the traveling exhibitions currently supported by the Foundation.
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Alice’s Wonderland
Based on the popular book, this exhibit provides rich, developmentally appropriate learning experiences in math, science, and literacy and is fun for the whole family. Organized by the Children’s Discovery Museum of San Jose, Alice’s Wonderland will travel to more than 10 cities across the country over the next five years. The exhibition was the recipient of the 2003 Excellence in Exhibitions Award presented by the American Association of Museums.
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Hudson River School: Masterworks from the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art
Masterworks from the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art. Organized by the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art in Hartford CT, this traveling exhibition features over 50 paintings from the Museum’s renowned Hudson River School collection by such great American painters as Frederic E. Church, Thomas Cole, Asher B. Durand, George Inness, among many others. This is the first time the museum has taken its treasured collection of the Hudson River School paintings on the road. The tour stops at the Stanford University Center for Visual Arts, the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, North Carolina Museum of Art in Raleigh, The Tacoma Art Museum, the Philbrook Museum of Art in Tulsa, the St. Louis Museum of Art, and the Frist Center for the Visual Arts in Nashville. (Thomas Cole, Scene from "The Last of the Mohicans," Cora Kneeling at the Feet of Tamenund, 1827, Oil on canvas, Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Bequest of Alfred Smith). |
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Memory
Developed by The Exploratorium, San Francisco, CA, the traveling exhibit Memory explores mysterious corners of the human brain. Blending neuroscience with fun-filled and challenging games to flex a guest's mental muscles, Memory is guaranteed to be ... memorable! By the end of 2007, the exhibition will have visited 20 cities in the United States. |
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Voces y Visiones (Voices and Visions): Highlights from El Museo del Barrio’s Permanent Collection
El Museo del Barrio is one of the few Latino museums in the United States with a permanent collection. Its richly varied collection includes 6,500 objects, ranging from pre-Columbian artifacts to contemporary works by Latino artists and artists from Puerto Rico, the Caribbean, Mexico, Central and South America. For the first time, El Museo will make significan works from its permanent collection accessible to a national audience. Voces y Visiones will tour to eight cities in celebration of El Museo’s 35th anniversary. |
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| NATIONAL PERFORMANCE TOURS |
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| In order to increase accessibility to the arts and encourage artistic excellence, MetLife Foundation sponsors several performing arts tours each year. Tour sponsorship enables dance and theater companies to share their unique styles and repertories with communities throughout the country, while helping build diverse and sustained audiences for the individual companies and the arts. |
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Ailey II
Founded in 1974, Ailey II is the official company-in-residence of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Center. Formerly known as the Alvin Ailey Repertory Ensemble, Ailey II visits over 30 cities each year, reaching tens of thousands of people annually through its diverse programs. Under the artistic direction of former Ailey dancer Sylvia Waters, Ailey II provides emerging choreographers and young dancers with an extensive New York and national audience.
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Ballet Hispanico
Ballet Hispanico, the preeminent Hispanic-American dance company, blends classical dance and Hispanic culture. Its works have been seen by over 1.5 million people in 41 states, Europe, South American and the Caribbean. The company has been featured on CBS Sunday Morning and has won several awards for its contributions to the arts. |
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Dancing Wheels
Dancing Wheels was founded by Mary Verdi-Fletcher, who was born with spina bifida but dreamed of becoming a dancer. She not only fulfilled that dream, she made it possible for others to follow in her path. Dancing Wheels sends a powerful message by combining dancers in wheel chairs with unimpaired dancers and featuring them in dramatic choreography. A MetLife Foundation Access to the Arts grant has helped the company visit dozens of cities across the country.
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H.T. Chen and Dancers Company
An innovative modern dance company, H.T. Chen & Dancers has created a uniquely Asian-American style of dance. The company's dynamic technique infuses Western modern dance with the strength and beauty of Asian aesthetics.
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Mark Morris Dance Group
Founded by the internationally acclaimed choreographer Mark Morris in 1980, the Mark Morris Dance Group (MMDG) has grown to a company of 18 dancers that presents an average of 90 shows a year in 35 cities worldwide as well as workshops and educational outreach activities. MMDG is the only modern dance company in the country to feature live music at every performance. |
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Paul Taylor Dance Company
The Paul Taylor Dance Company is one of the leading modern dance groups in the United States. The company has performed for audiences around the world for over 40 years in over 400 cities in more than 60 nations and has been featured on national television. Paul Taylor has won numerous awards, including the National Medal of Arts (1993), three Guggenheim Fellowships and a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship. Recently, the company completed a 50-state tour in celebration of its fiftieth anniversary. |
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Ping Chong and Company
Ping Chong and Company, originally the Fiji Theatre Company, was founded in 1975 by Ping Chong who is recognized as one of the country’s most significant Asian-American artists. Today, the company creates innovative works of theater and art for multi-cultural audiences in New York and throughout the world. The company provides an artistic home and professional base for a multiracial core group of performers, designers and theatre artists. MetLife Foundation is Ping Chong & Company’s national sponsor. |
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| ACCESS TO THE ARTS |
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| Introduced in 2000, this initiative aims to encourage organizations to make the arts more inclusive and accessible for the special needs community by funding innovative programs. The Access to the Arts initiative awards grants each year to various cultural organizations that have demonstrated leadership and innovation in arts access. Organizations that have received support for accessibility-related projects include The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, VSA arts in Washington, DC, Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center, The National Theatre of the Deaf in Hartford, CT, Dancing Wheels in Cleveland, OH, and National Assembly of State Arts Agencies in Washington, DC. |
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| MUSEUM INITIATIVES |
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Supporting and increasing educational opportunities for people of all ages is a key emphasis for MetLife Foundation. Museums play an important role in helping people experience and understand our world and are valuable resources for schools and communities. Recognizing the important contributions and educational value of museums, MetLife Foundation has awarded grants totaling over $25 million in recent years to museums across the country.
MetLife Foundation Museum and Community Connections
To encourage art museums to reach out to large numbers of people of all ages and backgrounds through imaginative programs and/or exhibits that help us understand and appreciate each other, MetLife Foundation has created a new initiative entitled Museum and Community Connections. In 2007, the Foundation awarded grants totaling $1 million through this program. For more information, see the following press release.
Smithsonian SITES Community Grants Program
This program was created to deepen connections between host venues of exhibitions organized by the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibitions (SITES) and their communities by encouraging exhibitors to engage their local audiences in new and exciting ways while creating broader access to SITES exhibitions.During 2005-2007 under this program, eligible SITES exhibitors may apply for support for public, educational programming produced in conjunction with a SITES exhibit. Exhibitors may choose to enhance current program offerings or to create a new program especially suited to the topic of the exhibition. Program guidelines can be found on SITES’ Web site.
MetLife Foundation Music for Life Initiative
Music enhances the quality of life and builds community. The Music for Life initiative is designed to bring music into the lives of more individuals, from babies to older people. It was created to support symphony orchestras and other groups with a focus on music and music education. Since its inception in 2002, $5.75 million has been awarded to organizations including the New York Philharmonic, the Hartford Symphony Orchestra, the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the Florida Orchestra, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the American Symphony Orchestra League, National Guild of Community Schools of the Arts, Opus 118 Music Center, the Alzheimer's Association, and Zero to Three - National Center for Infants, Toddlers and Families. Application for this program is closed.
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