Professor Thomas Sleeper conducts University of Miami Frost School of Music students in ‘The Marriage of Figaro.’ Credit: Jenifer Day Clark, 2012

By Alberto Ibargüen 

Each year, Knight Foundation’s trustees visit different Knight communities, to see and feel the work being done in the cities where Jack and Jim Knight once owned newspapers. This year, we put the spotlight on Miami, with a day that began in Wynwood and culminated in a community gathering at the Perez Art Museum Miami. It’s an ideal way to celebrate that art has become general in Miami, and it’s inspiring a new generation to build the city’s future.

Our funding in the arts dates back to Knight Foundation’s first investments in the 1950s; Jack and Jim’s mother, Clara, was a devoted patron of the arts and recognized their role in building community. But nearly a decade ago, we saw an opportunity in Miami to accelerate the organic change beginning to happen, and invested heavily to fuel it.

Our approach has been two-pronged: We fund key institutions, such as New World Symphony, Miami City Ballet and the Miami International Film Festival, which each year offer programming to tens of thousands of South Floridians. Our first big grant in this area was the naming gift for the John S. and James L. Knight Concert Hall at the Arsht Center for the Performing Arts.  Our funding helps these organizations engage a broad swath of the community in their work.

We also fund the grassroots artists and arts organizations that are providing fresh and innovative work, so that everyone has a chance to make their idea a reality. We do that through the Knight Arts Challenge, now in its eighth year. Our challenge seed funding helped ideas such as O, Cinema, Cannonball, and the El Sistema-inspired Miami Music Project to grow into what are now cultural forces.

At the community gathering, we announced an additional investment: $25 million that will go to three outstanding institutions — and to continue the Knight Arts Challenge in South Florida through 2018.

With the funding, PAMM will have the flexibility to present programs befitting their spectacular new museum building; the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami, the city’s newest contemporary art institute, will provide at least three cutting-edge exhibitions a year; and the Frost School of Music at the University Miami, already one of the top schools in the country, will build a high-tech recital hall befitting its reputation.At the community gathering, we announced an additional investment: $25 million that will go to three outstanding institutions — and to continue the Knight Arts Challenge in South Florida through 2018.

Transitions

Knight will also soon welcome another leader to take the helm of this program. Victoria Rogers, who has been instrumental in charting a path for the New World Symphony and its center on Miami Beach, will join us in May as our new vice president for arts. Dennis Scholl, who has infused the program with brilliance and creativity during his six years of leadership, will be stepping down to return to his many business and arts interests.

We are immensely grateful to Dennis for developing the program and positioning it for further growth. We look forward to Victoria building on his work and helping to make possible that magical thing, of enabling artists to move the soul of a community, and ensure that art remains general across South Florida.

Alberto Ibargüen is president and CEO of Knight Foundation.

‘Sanatorium,’ by Pedro Reyes at ICA Miami. Photo: Gesi Schilling.