A Time to Renew and Strengthen Our Program

Will Rogers once said, "Even if you are on the right track, you will get run over if you just sit there."

Early on in the shaping of the Nathan Cummings Foundation, we decided that creativity, flexibility, and responsiveness would be central elements of our Foundation's culture. We emphasized the ability to react quickly to needs and opportunities, and to be innovative in our response.

This past year, the Foundation emerged from adolescence to fullblown adulthood. We grew, both literally and figuratively, in keeping with our development as a major, new foundation.

In terms of physical growth, we moved to new, larger offices on the West side of Manhattan. I am proud to have been part of the team of Board and staff who worked tirelessly with our very talented architect, PeterWormser, to design a workplace where people feel welcome, engaged, and challenged to be their most creative. I am grateful to and impressed by the Foundation staff who managed to perform business as usual despite the many disruptions of the move and renovation.

Susan Sollins of Independent Curators helped us to design and install an exhibit of contemporary art in our offices that highlights themes of the Foundation's program areas: the environmental crisis, health and wellness, the values of diversity and multi-culturalism, the interdependence of all people, and concern for the common good. My colleagues and I believe that artistic imagination and sensibility have the potential for helping our society discover new ways of relating to our natural environment. One of the pieces that describes that relationship is shown on the cover of this report. Ashley Bickerton's sculpture Minimalism's Evil Orthodoxy, Monoculture's Totalitarian Aesthetic #2 (1989), makes a political and environmental statement about non- sustainable agriculture.

The art is intent onally challenging and provocative; while it is aesthetically appealing, it raises questions about substantive issues-about the state of the environment and the way we humans live on the earth. We are grateful to work in such an extraordinary space and look forward to sharing our new home with our community.

In line with our physical growth, we have also developed institutionally. The Board and staff have been discussing how to increase our impact in our fields of focus. We want to share the lessons learned from our experience, and the experience of our grantees, over the past four years. In our Jewish Life program, for example, we heeded our grantees' requests for information sharing among innovative Jewish organizations and convened a meeting entitled, "Roots and Wings: A Nathan Cummings Foundation Consultation to Strengthen and Expand the Impact of Innovative Ideas in the Jewish Community." During the two-day meeting in Los Angeles, Foundation grantees discussed their creative, new work in Jewish healing, spirituality, and environmentalism and how to establish this work in the mainstream through networking and replication.

It is a tribute to the Board of the Nathan Cummings Foundation that it has continued to renew itself-making commitments together to develop the contributions of younger family members, to encourage collaboration with staff, and to learn from each other. To Charlie and the NCF staff, on behalf of the Board, I wish to thank you for your boundless enthusiasm, creativity, and commitment. I am sure our founder, Nathan Cummings, would share our enormous pride in this enterprise. tica,Geneva,Swiss,SunSans-Regular">The art is intent onally challenging and provocative; while it is aesthetically appealing, it raises questions about substantive issues-about the state of the environment and the way we humans live on the earth. We are grateful to work in such an extraordinary space and look forward to sharing our new home with our community.