Philanthropy for an Interdependent World
Pocantico Forum
Introduced in 2000, the Pocantico Forum is a semiannual lecture series designed to provide information on a wide range of issues and topics that reflect the broad program objectives of the Fund. The lectures are hosted by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and will, from time to time, involve partnerships with other local, regional, and national organizations and institutions.
WINTER POCANTICO FORUM
Program Relevance / General Support
February 27, 2009
Rockefeller Brothers Fund
A winter Pocantico Forum was organized in collaboration with the Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture and featured Dr. Peter Raven, President, Missouri Botanical Garden and George Engelmann, Professor of Botany, Washington University. Nearly 250 guests filled The Hay Loft at the Stone Barns Center to hear Dr. Raven speak on the necessity of redoubling our efforts for a sustainable world through the creation of parks and reserves, attempting to preserve species outside their native habitats, and fostering the survival of species in areas that are greatly altered.
The goal of the Pocantico Forum series is to provide information on a wide range of issues and topics that reflect the broad program objectives of the RBF.
FALL POCANTICO FORUM
Program Relevance / General Support
October 7, 2008
Rockefeller Brothers Fund
This year's fall Pocantico forum featured Walt Whitman in Song, a program of new songs setting texts of Whitman newspaper editorials and poems by composers from American Opera Projects, a grantee of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. The program, developed in partnership with the Brooklyn-based The Walt Whitman Project, honors Whitman's influence on American Poetry. The musical tribute, performed by American Opera Projects composers and librettists, included songs/texts by other American poets with an emphasis on Whitman's many writings on the New York area, its sights, history, and culture.
The goal of the Pocantico forum series is to provide information on a wide range of issues and topics that reflect the broad program objectives of the RBF.
SPRING POCANTICO FORUM
Program Relevance / General Support
June 3, 2008
Rockefeller Brothers Fund
There was tremendous public interest in this year's spring Pocantico forum which featured a panel discussion with representatives of the four local National Trust sites: Christy MacLear, Executive Director, Philip Johnson Glass House; Renee Epps, Executive Vice President, Lower East Side Tenement Museum; Jack Braunlein, Director, Lyndhurst; and Charles Granquist, Executive Director, Pocantico Center.
Each speaker highlighted several new approaches to community engagement that are taking place at each of these historic sites. They demonstrated how these properties can respond to the changing needs of their communities and evolve beyond the traditional historic site experience. The program concluded with a lively Q & A with the audience.
The goal of the Pocantico forum series is to provide information on a wide range of issues and topics that reflect the broad program objectives of the RBF.
POCANTICO FORUM: "AT HOME IN THE MUSEUM - BREUER BUILDS FOR MOMA"
November 8, 2007
Residents from the local community gathered to hear Dr. Barry Bergdoll, Philip Johnson Chief Curator of Architecture and Design at the Museum of Modern Art and professor of modern architectural history at Columbia University, discuss the domestic architecture of Marcel Breuer as seen in the house built for an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in 1949 and moved to Pocantico in 1950. In January 2007, the house was deeded to the National Trust for Historic Preservation by the estate of Laurance S. Rockefeller. It is administered and maintained by the RBF and used for the Fund's philanthropic and educational programs on site. At the conclusion of the program guests had the opportunity to view, from outside, the illuminated interior of the Breuer House.
POCANTICO FORUM: UNDERSTANDING THE GLOBAL WARMING FORECAST Using the past to Look to the Future
May 22, 2007
This year's spring forum featured Peter B. deMenocal, Ph.D, a paleoclimatologist at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University (LDEO) who uses geochemical analyses of marine sediments to understand how and why past climates have changed. During his presentation, Dr. deMenocal discussed modern global warming within the context of climate changes over recent millennia as reconstructed from long archives of past changes in Earth's climate preserved in trees, glaciers, corals, and in sediments at the bottom of the ocean. Peter B. deMenocal, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Columbia University.
"SHOULD NON-CITIZENS HAVE VOTING RIGHTS, AGAIN?"
November 8, 2006
Residents from the local community came to hear author Ron Hayduk talk about his most recent book, Democracy for All, which examines the politics and practices of non-citizen voting in the United States, chronicling the rise and fall- and re-emergence-of immigrant voting in the United States. In addition to making the case for non-citizen voting, his book explores the prospects for a truly universal suffrage in America.
A FAMILY'S LOVE OF ASIAN ART
May 23, 2006
The spring forum was inspired by the Asia Society's exhibit, "A Passion for Asia: The Rockefeller Family Collects," to celebrate the 50th anniversary of their founding by John D. Rockefeller 3rd. Accompanying the exhibition was a publication, A Passion for Asia: the Rockefeller Legacy, to which Mrs. Cynthia Bronson Altman, curator for the Collections at Kykuit, contributed an examination of the collections of ceramics, textiles, sculptures, and prints. At the spring forum, Mrs. Altman provided local residents with a closer look at the family's collections in New York, Pocantico, and Maine.
THE CERTIFIED FAIR TRADE MOVEMENT: WHAT IT ENCOMPASSES...AND HOW YOU CAN PARTICIPATE
October 25, 2005
Fair Trade, a 25-year-old global movement that seeks to ensure that international trade practices provide a fair price to producers of a wide range of commodities, from coffee, tea, and cocoa to bananas and handicrafts, was the topic of the 12th Pocantico Forum. During this Pocantico Forum, Dr. Michael E. Conroy, development economist and Rockefeller Brothers fund program officer who presently teaches seminars at the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies and is a member of the board of directors of TransfairUSA, and Jim Munson, vice president, Dallis Coffee Company, provided background on the history of the fair trade movement, which included a presentation of the meaning of fair trade among farmers in Ethiopia and elsewhere. Together, they addressed the challenges facing fair trade today, including the need to expand consumer awareness, struggles within the movement on how to expand it, and the need to assist poor farmers in developing the high quality of coffee demanded by today's specialty coffee market.
STONE BARNS CENTER FOR FOOD AND AGRICULTURE: HOW, WHY AND WHAT
May 18, 2005
Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture, founded by David Rockefeller and dedicated to his late wife, Peggy, became the topic of the 11th Pocantico Forum. Stone Barns, a farmland preserve, is located on 80 acres of the family's original 4,000-acre family estate in Westchester County. Dan Barber, chef and co-owner of Blue Hill at Stone Barns-along with staff from the Stone Barns Center - discussed how food is grown, produced, and distributed. They also discussed the evolution of food production, the origin of Stone Barns Center, and their mission to promote, demonstrate, and teach sustainable community-based food production.
THE WILD CHOICETM
November 4, 2004
Michael W. Klemens, Ph.D., senior conservationist and director of the Wildlife Conservations Society's Metropolitan Conservation Alliance, offered remarks about the history of conservation and development in the Hudson River Valley and the need for new approaches to achieve conservation objectives through more ecologically-determined patterns of human settlement.
LIVE CONSCIOUSLY, BUY WISELY, MAKE A DIFFERENCE
April 28, 2004
Approximately 100 guests from the local community gathered to hear Betsy Taylor, president of the Center for a New American Dream and author of Sustainable Planet: Solutions for the 21st Century, talk about ways that Americans can make positive contributions to efforts to address global environmental challenges, including climate change, loss of biodiversity, and the depletion of essential resources.
THE ORION SOCIETY'S FORGOTTEN LANGUAGE TOUR
November 6, 2003
Eighty-six guests from the local Pocantico community gathered to hear readings by poet Pattiann Rogers and essayist Scott Russell Sanders that addressed the broad theme of the relationship between the health of human communities and that of the natural environment.
A PERSPECTIVE ON THE COLLECTION'S SCULPTURE IN THE LANDSCAPE: HISTORY, SITING AND CONSERVATION
May 20, 2003
The seventh Pocantico Forum featured Cynthia B. Altman, curator of the collections, who presented five of the major works of twentieth-century sculpture found in the gardens of Kykuit.
MR. ROCKEFELLER'S ROADS
November 7, 2002
The sixth Pocantico Forum featured a talk given by Ann R. Roberts, daughter of Nelson A. Rockefeller and author of Mr. Rockefeller's Roads: The Untold Story of Acadia's Carriage Roads and Their Creator. Guests were also treated to a slide presentation depicting the history and topography of the carriage trails in Acadia National Park on Mount Desert Island, ME, which were inspired by Ms. Roberts's grandfather, John D. Rockefeller, Jr.
PERFORMING ARTS IN BALI-LOCAL CULTURE/GLOBAL CULTURE
April 16, 2002
Approximately 100 guests from the local community attended the fifth Pocantico Forum. The Carriage Room of the Coach Barns was transformed into a theater-in-the-round for the spring forum, which was orchestrated and moderated by Ralph Samuelson, the director of the Asian Cultural Council. Guests took part in a conversation and performance with Ron Jenkins, the chairman of the theater department at Wesleyan University, and delighted in performances by I Nyoman Catra and Desak Made Suarti Laksmi, both of the National College of the Arts in Bali, Indoneisa, and two of Bali's foremost performing artists in the fields of masked dance/theater and music. Having studied and taught in the U.S., they discussed and demonstrated ways in which their encounters with Western arts have inspired them to rethink the performance traditions of Asia.
GRANTMAKING OPPORTUNITIES IN THE BALKANS
November 13, 2001
The Rockefeller Brothers Fund's president, Stephen B. Heintz, who has extensive experience in the Balkans and has taken a leadership role in exploring opportunities for RBF funding, with an initial focus on the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, including Serbia, Kosovo, and Montenegro. Mr. Heintz has traveled to Serbia on several occasions during the past nine months and reported to the audience on prospects for strengthening civil society and supporting the transformation of Serb national identity, as well as U.S. public and private sector options for engagement in the Balkans.
A CENTURY OF FOUNDATION PHILANTHROPY IN AMERICA
May 10, 2001
Approximately 75 guests from the local community gathered at the Coach Barn for the third Pocantico Forum. Benjamin Shute, Jr., secretary of the RBF and program officer for its Nonprofit Sector grantmaking program, gave an informal overview of the evolution of foundation philanthropy from its origins at the turn of the 20thcentury through present-day grantmaking, with an emphasis on the history of the RBF.
"THE FUTURE OF THE REGION'S WATERFRONTS"
November 14, 2000
Eighty guests from the local community attended the second in an annual series of free lectures. The forum, featured representatives from two of the Fund's grantees: the Municipal Art Society and Scenic Hudson, Inc. Following introductory remarks made by RBF program officer Michael Northrop, guests heard Kent L. Barwick, president of the Municipal Art Society and director of the Metropolitan Waterfront Alliance , and Ned Sullivan, executive director of Scenic Hudson, Inc., discuss the pressures and opportunities occasioned by the redevelopment of the metropolitan area's waterfront.
THE PASSION FOR GARDEN ORNAMENT IN EARLY 20TH-CENTURY AMERICA
April 11, 2000
Some 70 guests from the local community attended the first lecture, a talk on American garden ornaments by Barbara Israel. Examples of such ornaments may be found throughout the gardens at Kykuit - a subject that reflects the RBF's commitment to the stewardship of Pocantico.
