PRESERVING CULTURAL HERITAGE OF HAITI: (left to right) Bob Wankel, President and Co-CEO of the Shubert Organization; Paul Libin, Chairman of The Broadway League and VP/Producing Director of Jujamcyn Theatres; Margo Lion, Co-Chairman, President's Committee on the Arts and the Humanities; Nina Lannan, Immediate Past Chairman of The Broadway League and President, Nina Lannan and Associates; Rocco Landesman, Chairman, National Endowment for the Arts; The Honorable Marie Laurence Jocelyn -Lassègue, Minister of Culture and Communication; G. Wayne Clough, Secretary, Smithsonian Institution; The Honorable Patrick Delatour, Minister of Tourism; Francoise Thybulle, Director General of the National Library of Haiti; Frantz Toussaint, Representative, The Ministry of the Haitian Diaspora in North America; Marsha Semmel, Acting Director, Institute of Museum and Library Services; Jim Leach, Chairman, National Endowment for the Humanities; Richard Kurin, Undersecretary for History, Art, and Culture, Smithsonian Institution; Rachel Goslins, Executive Director, President's Committee on the Arts and the Humanities. Photo: Tony Brown
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The Broadway
League & Broadway Community Join Forces with Washington & Various Agencies to Preserve the Cultural Heritage of Haiti
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New York, NY– In conjunction with The President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities, the Smithsonian Institution, and various agencies, the Broadway community has decided to contribute funds to a very special project to protect and preserve the cultural heritage of Haiti.
Following the devastating earthquake in January, The Broadway League and several of its members including theater owners, shows, and producers have contributed $276,000 to a special Haiti fund. The collective desire is to help insure that the artifacts from theatres, museums and libraries be preserved for all time. This project aims to develop a site where artifacts from theatres, museums, and historic buildings can be stored and protected during the rainy season and until new sites are built or old sites are restored. At the present time, many of these artifacts will be lost without this effort.
Paul Libin, Chairman of The Broadway League and Vice President/Producing Director of Jujamcyn Theatres, said, “Theatre is the experience of a peoples’ art, music, poetry, their myths and experience; what better way to help the Haitian People than provide assistance for them to save their art, music, books and artistic record in order to preserve their cultural heritage thus enabling them to create the new. The Arts community is a family; it is our duty to help so all cultures and art can prosper.”
Charlotte St. Martin, Executive Director of The Broadway League, said, “When the earthquake hit Haiti, the Broadway community immediately reached out within hours and asked how we could be a part of relief or restoration. We are pleased that Broadway can support the restoration and help save a small part of the Haitian culture.”
"The Broadway League and the Broadway community stepped in at a crucial juncture for this project. It would not have been possible to make it happen, especially on this timeline, without their generous support," said Rachel Goslins, Executive Director, The President's Committee on the Arts and the Humanities.
Plans are being made to send a delegation to Haiti to collaborate and find out how to best help this project.
For more information on The Broadway League, please visit www.broadwayleague.com
(Editor's note: Haiti still needs your help and donations. To donate to Haitian relief efforts, please visit http://clintonbushhaitifund.org/ and http://www.redcross.org/ )
Published May 14, 2010
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