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Dartmouth College’s Hopkins Center for
the Arts (known as the Hop) has been awarded $5 million from The
Howard Gilman Foundation to endow the center’s directorship, providing
resources to support the director’s position and venture funds for new Hopkins
Center initiatives. The late Howard Gilman ’44 was a prominent New York arts
benefactor whose family has made substantial gifts to the College. In honor of
the gift, the Hopkins Center director will hold the title “Howard Gilman
Director of the Hopkins Center.”
The late Howard Gilman ’44, during a 1988 visit to the Claflin Jewelry
Studio, which he named in honor of his friend, renowned jewelry designer Donald
Claflin. (Photo by Stuart Bratesman '75)
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The Hop is a vibrant institution with a dual mission to keep the arts
central to the Dartmouth community and to provide the core educational
environment for artistic study, creation, and presentation. It was hailed
nationally as an innovation in campus arts programming when it opened in 1962,
as was the building itself, created by Wallace Harrison, designer of Lincoln
Center’s Metropolitan Opera House.
“Howard Gilman was visionary in his support for the arts and for young
artists,” says President James
Wright. “It’s an honor to have Howard’s named associated with pursuits so
important to a liberal arts education. President Ernest Martin Hopkins, the
center’s namesake, correctly called art essential to the human experience, and
predicted the Hop would become the ‘heart and soul’ of campus. It has. The
Howard Gilman Foundation’s generosity ensures that it will remain so in the
decades ahead.”
Jeffrey James, the Hop’s director since 2005, will be the inaugural Howard
Gilman Director of the Hopkins Center. James is former executive director of
the Cunningham Dance Foundation and has held leadership positions with the
California Institute for the Arts, the Dance Theatre of Harlem, the New York
Philharmonic, and the University of California at Los Angeles.
Each year the Hop stages more than 100 internationally diverse music, dance,
and theater performances, in addition to 50 student instrumental, vocal, and
dance ensembles and 200 film screenings. More than 25 percent of Dartmouth
students participate in the Hop’s jewelry, woodworking, and pottery
workshops.
Howard Gilman ’44 majored in business at Dartmouth and was particularly
interested in music, joining two music clubs. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa and
served in the Navy during World War II. He entered the family business, the
Gilman Paper Company, eventually becoming president and chairman of the board.
He loved photography (the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which eventually received
the Gilman Paper Company Collection, called him “one of the world’s great
collectors of photographs”), and was a benefactor to universities, a wide range
of visual and performing arts institutions, and wildlife conservation. He
served on the Hopkins Center Board of Overseers from 1977 to 1984. He died in
1998.
The Gilman family has made generous gifts to Dartmouth: to the annual fund
and scholarships, the Gilman Faculty Loan Fund, Dartmouth Medical School, and the Gilman
Biomedical Center Fund. The Howard Gilman Foundation made the lead gift to the
Gilman Life Sciences Building and named the Claflin Jewelry Studio at the Hop
in honor of Gilman’s good friend Donald Claflin, regarded as one of the most
talented jewelry designers of his time. The Hopkins Center gift was one of
three major Howard Gilman Foundation legacy awards to mark the 10th anniversary
of Gilman’s death. Other recipients are the Brooklyn Academy of Music and the
Lincoln Center Film Society.
“Howard Gilman was a gracious and modest man, keenly sensitive to the
welfare of others. He deeply loved the arts and always had a special attachment
to Dartmouth,” says Howard Gilman Foundation chairman Natalie Moody. “The
trustees of The Howard Gilman Foundation are pleased that, with this gift, we
are helping Dartmouth to continue advancing arts education and
appreciation.”
The resources and name recognition bestowed by the Gilman gift will enable
the Hop to pursue an ambitious agenda, continuing to commission original works,
and increasing touring opportunities for its student ensembles. The Hop will
also continue to seek opportunities to apply new technology to the performing
arts.
“Arts education is at the core of a college arts center like the Hop,” says
James, “whether it’s intense instruction for our student artists, or the
powerful influence that eclectic performances, exhibits, and elective courses
can have on the wider Dartmouth community. For us, they are equally important
in fostering appreciation for the arts, which are such an essential aspect of
the human character. By creating this endowment fund, the Gilman Foundation
makes the Hop directorship permanent and gives it support to be permanently
ambitious.”
Endowing the Hopkins Center directorship is a priority in the $1.3 billion
Campaign for the Dartmouth
Experience, the largest fund-raising effort in Dartmouth history.
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