Annual Lecture is held the evening before Arts Advocacy Day in Washington, D.C.

Monday, January 9, 2017

Darren Walker, President of the Ford Foundation, will give the 30th Annual Nancy Hanks Lecture on Arts and Public Policy. Walker will deliver the lecture on March 20, 2017, at 6:30 p.m. in the Concert Hall at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. The Nancy Hanks Lecture is free, but seating is limited. Ticket requests must be made online by March 13, 2017.

For two decades, Walker been a leader in the nonprofit and philanthropic sectors. He led the philanthropy committee that helped bring a resolution to the city of Detroit’s historic bankruptcy and chairs the U.S. Impact Investing Alliance. Prior to joining Ford Foundation, the nation’s second largest philanthropy, he was Vice President at the Rockefeller Foundation, where he managed the Rebuilding New Orleans Initiative after Hurricane Katrina. In the 1990s, as Chief Operating Officer of Harlem’s largest community development organization, the Abyssinian Development Corporation, Walker oversaw a comprehensive revitalization program of central Harlem, including over 1,000 new units of housing.

The Nancy Hanks Lecture on Arts and Public Policy is a leading national forum for arts policy intended to stimulate dialogue on policy and social issues affecting the arts. It is held each year on the evening before Arts Advocacy Day at The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, DC. The annual lecture is named for Nancy Hanks, former president of Americans for the Arts and chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, who devoted 15 years of her professional life to bringing the arts to prominent national consciousness.

RSVP here for two free tickets to the Nancy Hanks Lecture given by Darren Walker before March 13, 2017.