Doris Duke Foundation Recognizes Excellence in the Performing Arts

Since opening in 2001, the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center has held the position of a national model for a university performing arts center through its three-fold mission of education, performance, and community outreach of the highest quality. The Center's commitment to excellence has recently received a wonderful vote of confidence. In June 2006, the Center was awarded a $1.125 million grant from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation through its new Leading College and University Presenters Program.

The Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center, one of only three in the nation to receive this award, was selected because of its artistic excellence, exceptional organizational capacity and financial health, strong university commitment and support, and impact on the communities it serves.

The grant supports artistic programming during a three-year period and also provides for the establishment of an endowment to support artistic programming in perpetuity. It encourages the kind of activities for which the Clarice Smith Center has received wide recognition: innovative projects that integrate the performing arts into academic life and the surrounding community.

"An award like this affirms the choices we've made here at the Center as we work to transform lives through sustained engagement with the arts," said Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center Executive Director Susie Farr.