$38-Million Gift Backs Atlanta’s Woodruff Arts Center

The Robert W. Woodruff Foundation has donated $38-million to the Woodruff Arts Center in Atlanta to bolster the cultural consortium’s endowment and make capital improvements, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and the Atlanta Business Chronicle write. The gift appears to represent a vote on confidence in the center’s leadership following the resolution of a labor fight with one of its four component organizations, the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra.

The donation includes $25-million in matching endowment funds, some of which will fund full-time musician positions for the orchestra, which shrank by several seats as part of the four-year labor deal reached last month after a two-month lockout. The other $13-million will pay for improvements to the center’s facilities, primarily a complete renovation of the Alliance Theatre. The foundation and the arts center, though both named for the late Coca-Cola executive Robert W. Woodruff, are separate entities.