Legacy: The Kreielsheimer Foundation

Legacy is the fascinating inside story of how a great foundation touched dozens of organizations and countless people. Seattle’s cultural life, notable for its intellectual verve and rich variety, received an unexpected and enduring gift through the foresight of Leo and Greye Kreielsheimer. Through the provisions of the foundation they established, their fortune has been conveyed over a twenty-five year period to an astonishingly wide range of cultural institutions - centers of the Seattle, Puget Sound, and Alaska arts communities.

The presence on the Seattle scene of this active, generous, and culturally informed foundation was instrumental in encouraging other major donors to join in a number of grand and notable projects. It became possible not only to help certain arts organizations move beyond their typical year-to-year funding but also to expand, to build new halls and theaters, and even to establish endowments for the future.

Engaging first-person recollections include stories by Foundation trustee Donald L. Johnson about the golden years in Seattle’s arts community, as well as candid comments from many of the leading administrators of the Puget Sound region’s prominent educational and cultural organizations. Specific focus is given to the Kreielsheimer Foundation’s contributions to musical performance groups, the visual arts, local theater groups, and dance performance.