Art icons, game-changing gifts and more of the news worth noting in local nonprofits.
“Art Empowers”
Cantrell Gallery, an institution in the local art scene, is currently hosting a special art show and auction benefiting World Services for the Blind and the National Federation of the Blind of Arkansas. The exhibit “Art Empowers” features works from the gallery’s more than four decades of collecting, including the below piece “Le Chateau de Gala” by surrealist icon Salvador Dali.
The auction ends at a special in-store event on Dec. 4. See and bid on the collection in person or at 32auctions.com/artempowers.
High Praise
The Association of Zoos and Aquariums recognized the Little Rock Zoo with its AZA Accreditation Quarter Century Award, marking 25 years of meeting what is “widely regarded as a benchmark of excellence.”
At a luncheon celebrating the release of its annual report, the Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts awarded longtime supporter and board of trustees member Stan Hastings with the Winthrop Rockefeller Memorial Award. There, AMFA also announced the establishment of the George O’Connor Endowment in honor of this “consistent and generous champion of the museum.”
UAMS invested Chancellor C. Lowry Barnes, M.D., in the Harry P. Ward Chancellor’s Distinguished Chair.
Gifts & Grants
Easterseals Arkansas received $10,000 from the Simmons Bank Championship to support scholarships at Easterseals Academy.
Goodwill Arkansas received $850,000, its largest privately-funded grant, from BlackRock Future Builders to expand welding and construction programs and provide tuition-free training for 220 participants.
The Arkansas Community Foundation launched the Arkansas Full Table Fund, a statewide initiative fueled by a $10 million grant from the Walmart Foundation, Tyson Foods and others designed to advance statewide solutions to food insecurity.
The Arkansas Rural Health Transformation Program is working with the state’s medical powerhouses to expand healthcare access across the state, including granting $1 million to CARTI and more than $5 million across six UAMS initiatives.
Immerse Arkansas was gifted $4.5 million from an anonymous donor and land from New Heights Church to expand its work serving young adults in crisis to northwest Arkansas.
The Little Rock Zoo received a $1.2 million donation from the Arkansas Zoological Foundation, its largest gift to date, in support of the Project Zoo: Wildly Reimagined renovation project.
Big Moves
Ray Dillon is the newest board member for Home for Healing.
Forward Arkansas added Kyla Lawrence as programs manager and Jaylin Sprout as programs associate.
Jordan Hickey was named founding editor-in-chief of Arkansas Today, a newsroom with offices in Little Rock and Bentonville as part of the nonprofit regional news network Deep South Today.
Goodness Village added Alan Abston and Dalton Janssen to its board of directors.
Achieve Community Alliance (formerly United Cerebral Palsy of Arkansas) added five new board members: Mattie Hatcher Pruitt, Tina Jackson, Kevin Kinard, Tim Maddox and Rebecca Tennille.