Photo by Denise Ritchie

Members of the Vero Beach Museum of Art funding group, The Circle, gathered last Thursday afternoon in the museum’s atrium for a Closing Reception to cast their votes on which outreach programs the philanthropic women would fund in the upcoming season.

Circle members contribute $250 or more annually and a committee of volunteers reviews and narrows the choices for the final vote. The Circle’s funding helps to ensure that educational art programs are available to everyone, regardless of economic limitations.

The Community Engagement Programs under consideration were classified as School Programs; Community Engagement Partnerships; Student Programs; and Family Programs.

Over the past 10 years, funding has helped develop partnerships and programs including the Alzheimer’s & Parkinson’s Association Partnership, Art for Health’s Sake Initiative, Senior Resource Association, Art Lab Teen After-School Program, Dasie Bridgewater Hope Center Program, Artist in the School, Fellsmere Partnership Adopt-a-School, Indian River Academy Elementary School STEAM Program, Indian River County Moonshot Moment Initiative, Intergenerational Art Program, School Transportation Grants and Summer Camp Scholarships.

The women mingled over wine and hors d’oeuvres and discussed the merits of the four programs up for consideration to receive the $36,000 which the group raised this year: Museum Explorations PreK-12, Art for Health’s Sake In-House Training, Senior Resource Association Partnership Expansion, and Program for Veterans.

“As we know, The Circle is a generous organization,” said Cindy Binder, steering committee chair. “Including this year we have donated over $300,000 to the museum’s community impact programs. We are also generous in giving our time, our expertise and our talents to all the needs that this organization has.”

Sara Klein, VBMA director of education, gave a brief overview of the programs under consideration one last time before the ladies made their choices.

“The Circle is vital to funding educational programs at the Vero Beach Museum of Art, and we are really proud to have so many invested and enthusiastic women that we can count among our supporters for our programs,” said Klein.

“This is a really important part of our funding outreach. It’s great to see so many people help us as we help the community,” added Brady Roberts, VBMA CEO.

Once museum staff had tallied the votes, Binder announced, “for the 10th year of The Circle we will be funding the Museum Explorations PreK-12 School Program for a total of $22,710 and partially funding the Senior Resource Association Expansion.”

The Museum Explorations program is geared toward helping students to enhance visual literacy, critical thinking, and socio-emotional learning through art museum experiences. In the 2018-19 school year the program reached more than 2,000 students, with youngsters visiting the museum and participating in student-centered, inquiry-based, multisensory gallery engagements.

The Senior Resource Association program currently provides weekly Artful Engagements at its Vero Beach and Sebastian facilities and provides opportunities for seniors to engage in creative expression, cognitive and physical stimulation. This year’s funding will enable the museum to add one additional Movement in Motion class per week at both facilities and will provide more advanced art instruction with higher quality art materials.

New members are always welcome. For more information, call Robyn Orzel at 231-0707 ext. 106 or visit vbmuseum.org.