“For the next hour and a half, just enjoy the moment,” emcee Tony Aiello urged the 325 guests at ArtsWestchester’s “Arts Award Luncheon 2025,” held Wednesday, April 9, at the White Plains Sonesta Downtown. “Don’t look at your phone…your 401k,” added Aiello, a reporter with CBS-New York, to knowing laughter.
He was referring, of course, to the Trump Administration tariffs, now on a 90-day pause, that have shattered global markets, sending everything from small businesses to Wall Street billionaires reeling.
But the one thing that could not be forgotten as ArtsWestchester lauded some big local anniversaries, including its own 60th birthday, was the challenge of funding nonprofits, including the arts, amid not only stock market turmoil but federal cuts.
Indeed, two days before the luncheon, ArtsWestchester CEO Kathleen Reckling sent out an urgent email to local arts supporters that read in part:
“What is happening now on the federal level is a new challenge and test of our resiliency. With drastic cuts to the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), and further executive orders that limit the possibilities of free artistic expression and attempt to narrow the vision of the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), the arts need you right here with us….
“Due to the federal cuts, ArtsWestchester lost the balance of funding for four projects currently underway. Those projects had to be paused. Many of our affiliate arts and cultural organizations in Westchester County also lost promised funding, without warning. The artists who have been working hard on their projects and were looking forward to presenting them to our community are left in a state of uncertainty.”
The week of Monday, April 7, White Plains-based ArtsWestchester, the Hudson River Museum in Yonkers and the Greater Hudson Heritage Network in Elmsford received notices from the all-but-eliminated Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), advising them that their federal grants “no longer serve the interests of the United States.”
ArtsWestchester is losing about $60,000 for its Westchester Heritage Ambassador program, which supports a community-driven initiative designed for and by emerging leaders from three Westchester cultural communities – Ecuadorian, Paraguayan and Ghanaian.
The Hudson River Museum is losing about $55,000 for a photograph-scanning project to share digitally 6,000 to 8,000 images in its collection that have never been seen by the public. A spokesman said the images are of local, regional and national importance and shed light on historically under-told stories.
The Greater Hudson Heritage Network, which had just begun working with 10 small and mid-size museums in New York state to conserve objects from their collections, is expected. to lose $269,000.
At the “Arts Award Luncheon,” Reckling alluded to the grant terminations: “I don’t need to tell you this is a challenging time for us. We are living with the cuts every day. We brought everyone together today so we can face this moment as creatives.”
In facing the moment, award presenters, recipients and other speakers reminded attendees that “when the arts thrive, communities thrive,” in the words of Westchester County Executive Ken Jenkins, who was among the local, county and New York state leaders at the event.
“For me, the arts make bridges that connect us,” said Peruvian-born Flor Bromley, the Latin Grammy Award-nominated singer-songwriter, whose bilingual songs have been featured on Sirius XM’s “Kids Place Live” and WNET-Thirteen’s “Let’s Learn.”
Bromley received the Advancing Equity Award, as did White Plains-based Ballet des Ameriques, whose series include “An Evening of Dance in Westchester,” “Nutcracker Dream” at the Emelin Theatre in Mamaroneck and “eMele-K” at Teatro LATEA in Manhattan, honoring Martin Luther King Jr.’s legacy. In accepting Ballet des Ameriques’ award, its Creole founder, director and choreographer, Carole Alexis ,said that “segregation is self-destruction” and that we are here not meant for despair and fear but “to create joy and hope.”
And to connect the past to the present and future. Receiving the Milestone Award on behalf of the Tarrytown Music Hall, which opened in 1885, executive director Björn Olsson spoke of “echoes” through the years – everyone from President Woodrow Wilson to rockers Bruce Springsteen and Jon Bon Jovi to the students who file in for arts programming today.
The other Milestone Award recipient — Caramoor Center for Music and the Arts in Katonah, home to a Mediterranean-style house museum and an international summer music festival, among other programs – turns 80 this year. It was among the birthdays noted at the Arts Award Luncheon, including that of 10-year-old Bethany Arts Community (winner of the Sophia Abeles Arts Education Award), whose 25-acre site in Ossining offers art in every discipline to participants of every age and ability.
Perhaps a Bethany student may one day become a photographer like Kwame Anyane-Yeboa or Russian-born Anna Sirota, recipients of the Larry Salley Award; or a multiple Grammy Award-winning acoustic and electric bassist like Artist Award winner John Patitucci, who described himself as “just a kid from East Flatbush in Brooklyn,” albeit one who worked with Dizzy Gillespie and Paul Simon, among others. Patitucci, who performs all kinds of music, then played some jazz, which he said was “one of the most important things America has to offer.”
With funding stretched tight, arts organizations are going to have to rely more than ever on people like Paul Adler, an editor at Westchester Magazine who covers the arts (and received the Impact Award), and donors like Paul and Barbara Elliot, Rye residents who have been active on the boards of The Rye Arts Center and the Rye Historical Society, as well as the boards of ArtsWestchester (she) and the Holocaust & Human Rights Education Center in White Plains (he).
The Elliots, recipients of the Patron(s) Award, were among the sponsors of the luncheon, which included presenting sponsors NewYork-Presbyterian and the Jacob Burns Foundation Inc.; Westchester Magazine; M & T Bank, Lucille Werlinich and Westchester Medical Center; Tarrytown Music Hall; CClean, Children’s Village, Empire City Casino by MGM Resorts, Historic Hudson Valley, Iona University, Katonah Museum, Marx Realty/Cross County Center, Barbara Monohan, Leah Sills, White Plains Hospital and ArtsWestchester CEO Emerita Janet Langsam, whose paintings are on view at the Neuberger Museum of Art in Purchase through June 29.
The last award of the afternoon was a special surprise for Ann Fabrizio, ArtsWestchester’s former deputy director of development and communications, honoring her almost 30 years of service.
While Fabrizio has retired, ArtsWestchester is looking to its next 60 years. In her email letter, Reckling spoke of how Westchester’s arts community adapted to the pandemic:
“Westchester’s arts community has always shown resilience, and we will show it again.”
