Peter F. Donnelly

Peter F. Donnelly (October 6, 1938 – March 28, 2009) was an American patron of the arts. He was a former Vice-Chairman of Americans for the Arts, a co-founder of the Seattle Arts Commission and a pivotal figure in the Seattle artistic community for more than 45 years.[1]

Born in Lynn, Massachusetts, Donnelly graduated from Boston University and moved to Seattle in 1964 as a Ford Foundation management fellow to work with the fledgling Seattle Repertory Theatre as the first managing director and later as producing director,[2] during his 21-year tenure.[3]

In 1986, Donnelly left Seattle to take the position of the producing director of the Dallas Theater Center,[4] returning to Seattle in 1989 to at the request of local business leaders to head the Seattle Corporate Council for the Arts,[5] which later became ArtsFund, where he served as President and CEO until retiring in 2005.[6] In honor of his retirement, the ArtsFund created the Peter F. Donnelly Merit Fund for Arts Endowments.[7]

Donnelly is credited with being instrumental in the building of the Seattle Repertory Theatre's Bagley Wright Theater and the development of the Building for the Arts program, a primary funding source for Seattle's Benaroya Hall, Intiman Theater, Seattle Children's Theatre, as well as 150 other arts facilities.[8] In 2001 the Seattle Public Library honored Donnelly by naming one of their five major collections as The Peter F. Donnelly Art and Literature Collection.[9] Donnelly also served on the Board of Directors for the Frye Art Museum, the 5th Avenue Theatre, the University of Washington School of Drama Advisory Committee and Classic KING-FM Radio Station.

Death

Donnelly died on March 28, 2009, a week after being diagnosed with advanced pancreatic cancer[10] and is survived by his partner, David Farrar, of Seattle as well as two sisters.[11]

Awards

National Coalition of United Arts Fund's Michael Newton Award – 1995 [12]

Seattle Mayor's Arts Award – 2005 [13]

gollark: ++remind "september 24" it is already too late
gollark: Nobody needed those environment variables anyway, because it didn't crash.
gollark: Apparently you used to be able to use some internal Python API to get the location of argv/argc but they broke it.
gollark: I read somewhere that the environment list thing was near argv in memory, so it finds a common environment variable's location using `getenv`, scans backward until it finds `python3`, then randomly overwrites things.
gollark: Do you like my `argv[0]`-setting code, by the way? I think that's what it has to use to deceive `ps ax`.

References
  1. Seattle Times article on Donnelly
  2. Seattle Times article on Donnelly
  3. ArtsUsa news
  4. Dallas Theater Center article
  5. Seattle Corp. Council for the Arts background
  6. Donnelly's Council of the Arts administration
  7. Article on Donnelly endowments
  8. Seattle Times report on Donnelly
  9. "SPL.org". Archived from the original on 2010-12-30. Retrieved 2009-03-30.
  10. Obituary
  11. Seattle Times obit
  12. "SPL.org site". Archived from the original on 2010-12-30. Retrieved 2009-03-30.
  13. Seattle Mayor's Arts Award coverage
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