In Wednesday’s (6/26) Kansas City Star (Missouri), Kevin Collison writes, “A proposal to move the UMKC Conservatory of Music and Dance downtown, along with its more than 700 students and staff, received its critical first gift Wednesday—a $20 million challenge grant from the Muriel McBrien Kauffman Foundation. Julia Irene Kauffman … announced the gift Wednesday on the stage of the opera hall at the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts,” home to the Kansas City Symphony and other city arts organizations. Moving the facility “would be a big boost to downtown, specifically the Crossroads Arts District…. The cost to move the conservatory is estimated at $90 million.… The strategic goal of the proposal to bring the conservatory downtown is to forge the kind of creative bond between music instruction and performance that has occurred in New York with the Juilliard School and Lincoln Center, and in Boston between the New England Conservatory and Symphony Hall…. Kauffman described the $20 million grant as a challenge to the community. The grant has a three-year time limit for the rest of the funding to be obtained.”
Pictured: From the stage of the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts, Julia Irene Kauffman announces $20 million pledge to create a new UMKC Downtown Arts Campus for the Conservatory of Music and Dance. Photo by David Eulitt / Kansas City Star
Posted June 27, 2013
