A Tribute to Ellsworth Kelly

credit: qualitysmith

Ellsworth Kelly, widely considered the father of abstract art, died last week at his home in upstate New York at the age of 92.

But his legacy lives on in the form of $1.5 million in grants to public schools in the region where he lived and worked, the Times Herald-Record reports.

"For generations to come, public school students will have access to programs in the arts and humanities that increasingly suffer when school budgets are tight," says a statement from his family.

Since 2002, the artist and his wife, Jack Shear, have created endowed education enrichment funds for all six public school districts in Columbia County where he lived.

Since the first fund was established back in 2002, nearly 600 grants totaling almost $1 million have been awarded for projects that boost learning and teaching alike.

The breadth of these experiences is astonishing, a testament to the creativity of faculty and students.

In Chatham, an afterschool filmmaking project three films acted, shot, and edited middle and high schoolers in collaboration with the Chatham Film Club that premiered at the Crandell Theatre last spring.

Seniors studying government in Germantown have grappled with the realities of our criminal justice system through a tour of maximum security prison.

Hudson High schoolers, for whom college might seem out of reach, have been in campus life at Bard College

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