The Newport Art Museum will welcome its members and non-members alike for its Annual Meeting of the Membership on Wednesday, May 29 at 5 pm in the historic John N.A. Griswold House, located on its campus at 76 Bellevue Avenue, Newport. Doors open at 5 pm and the program will begin at 5:30 pm with refreshments to follow. All are welcome to attend the Annual Meeting of the Membership. Admission is free for Museum members and $10 for non-members. Seating is limited and tickets should be purchased online at www.newportartmuseum.org.
The Museum is pleased to welcome esteemed guest speaker Sylvia Brown for a talk, entitled “A Complex Legacy – America’s Philanthropic Impulse and Funding for the Arts.” Leveraging her family’s 300-year philanthropic legacy and her own 35 years of experience in the charitable sector, Sylvia Brown is a passionate advocate of thoughtful and effective giving. After earning her BS and MA degrees from the University of Pennsylvania, Sylvia pursued a career in international development, from Wall Street to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, from investment promotion campaigns in emerging markets to micro-finance initiatives on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.
In 2007, a course in strategic philanthropy sparked her new mission to promote affordable donor education. For the past decade, she has helped donors with their giving strategies and non-profits with their sustainability. In 2015, Sylvia launched Uplifting Journeys, “boot camps for smarter donors,” and now is developing a virtual version of her experiential curriculum. In 2017, she published “Grappling With Legacy – Rhode Island’s Brown Family and the American Philanthropic Impulse”. In 2018, she was certified as a Chartered Advisor in Philanthropy and is currently an Encore Public Voices Fellow at the OpEd Project, writing on effective giving practices for America’s retirees.
Sylvia’s great grandmother, Natalie Dresser Brown, a painter, was a founder of the Newport Art Museum; her grandfather, John Nicholas Brown, one of the “Monuments Men,” was a passionate advocate of great art and architecture; and her uncle, J. Carter Brown, was Director of the National Gallery in Washington, DC.