Art-Full Impact
Fords Give $500,000 for Youth Programs in Art Museum
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If you grew up in a major city, chances are you started enjoying museums early in life.
Now more children in rural areas will have similar experiences as the result of a Southern Oregon couple’s gift endowing youth programs at the University of Oregon’s Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art.
Cheryl Ramberg Ford ’66 and her husband, Allyn, president of Roseburg Forest Products, have given $500,000 to help expand the museum’s youth programs.
As a kid growing up in Roseburg, Cheryl loved going to art camps. The longtime museum volunteer has dreamed of being able to help more children take advantage of the UO art museum’s classes and outreach programs.
“Usually it is necessary to live in or travel to one of the nation’s major metropolitan centers in order to experience a museum of the quality of the UO’s art museum,” she said. “We are fortunate to have a museum of this caliber in western Oregon.”
The gift is having immediate impact, according to Lisa Abia-Smith, the museum’s director of educational outreach.
“This important gift already has helped more than 700 children participate free of charge,” Abia-Smith said. The endowment also provides funding for bus subsidies, making it possible for schools from small rural communities to send classes for museum field trips and special activities.
The new Ford endowment also supports the museum’s ArtsBridge Program, which places UO arts students in K-12 classrooms and juvenile justice facilities to teach art lessons inspired by the museum’s collections.
This fall marks the opening of the museum’s Second Annual NewArt Northwest Kids exhibition showcasing the creativity of K-12 students. The exhibition, supported by the Ford endowment, opens November 18 in the Cheryl Ramberg Ford Lecture Hall on the museum’s main floor.
Stop by the museum online, jsma.uoregon.edu.
— Melody Ward Leslie
