Bank of America
Charlotte, North Carolina
 
Bestowed 2000

Bank of America has been investing in the arts nationwide for more than 90 years. The bank considers the arts a major component of a vibrant and diverse community and continues to provide support to create stronger communities, increase access to the arts – especially among children –and build future audiences. In 1999 it allocated nearly $14 million to the arts.

Bank of America has benefited the arts, business and the community by:

• Providing a number of major grants to arts projects throughout the country, including $3 million to Port Discovery, a children's museum in Baltimore, Maryland; $1.5 million to The Museum of Modern Art in New York, New York for the Jackson Pollock retrospective; $1 million to the Miami Performing Arts Center; $2 million toward the construction of the Meyerson Symphony Center in Dallas, Texas; $5 million to the new Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, California. The bank also made a $1 million commitment to the Nashville Symphony for the Symphony 2000 endowment campaign, in addition to sponsoring its Pops Series.
• Providing nearly $17 million in 1998 for four initiatives to help revitalize Center City, the arts and cultural district in Charlotte, North Carolina: The Mint Museum of Craft + Design for a new addition dedicated to contemporary American studio crafts; The Visual Arts Organization/Artist Community, a renovated church with 19 studios in which artists work individually and collaboratively, exhibit their work and present community programs; a commissioned interior mosaic by Keith Goddard, and exterior interactive sound and light sculptures by Christopher Janney for the Seventh Street Station, a multi-level parking garage; and the commission of North Carolina artist Ben Long to create his fourth public fresco in Center City.
• Awarding $250,000 in grants during 1999 to grassroots not-for-profit organizations in 50 U.S cities to support arts and culture programs for disadvantaged youth.
• Purchasing The Hewitt Collection, one of the country's largest and most diverse private collections of 20th-century African-American art. Following a three-year national tour, the collection is promised to the Afro-American Cultural Center in Charlotte, North Carolina.
• Making a $100,000 grant in 1999 to support the construction of the new Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art in Arizona, featuring performance, installation and conceptual art, as well as exhibitions of architecture, painting, studio glass, mixed media, prints and photography.
• Sponsoring the Bank of America Casual Classic Series, a program of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. The bank also subsidizes tickets so that orchestra students in middle school through college may attend Atlanta Symphony performances and demonstration workshops.
• Developing the Bank of America Corporate Art Program, an art collection of more than 20,000 objects which are shown in the bank's offices throughout the world, and operates public galleries in Charlotte, North Carolina; Seattle, Washington; San Francisco and Costa Mesa, California.
• Earmarking $175,000 annually to sponsor the Chamber Music Series of the Spoleto Festival USA, Charleston, South Carolina. Each Friday during the festival, bank employees wear special t-shirts to encourage customers to attend festival performances.
• Providing on-going support to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Ashland, Oregon and the Oregon Symphony, Portland, Oregon.
• Developing the Volunteer Grants program in 1997 to recognize and encourage volunteerism among its employees. This program provides unrestricted grants to not-for-profit organizations for which employees have committed substantial volunteer time. Through its Matching Gifts Program, the bank matches, employee and retiree contributions up to $5,000 on a one-to-one basis to arts and cultural organizations.