MacDowell National Benefit

We look forward to welcoming guests to Gotham Hall for our National Benefit on Monday, October 19, 2026. The National Benefit is MacDowell's annual gathering that unites artists, cultural luminaries, philanthropists and institutional partners in celebration and support of the arts.

The evening will feature awards presentations to two individuals who exemplify the kind of leadership and profound, unique support for the arts that aligns with the legacy of MacDowell’s founders. Writer, theatrical producer and longtime Chief Executive Officer of the historic National Black Theatre (NBT), Sade Lythcott will be honored as the 7th annual Marian MacDowell Arts Advocacy Award recipient. Under her leadership, NBT has expanded its role as a vital cultural institution, championing Black artists and strengthening its role as a national advocate for the arts and cultural equity. Renowned artist Amy Sherald will present the award and introduce Lythcott.

Designer, entrepreneur and founder and Chief Executive Officer of Creative Mornings, Tina Roth Eisenberg will receive the 2nd annual Hillcrest Arts Impact Award. Through CreativeMornings, she has built one of the world’s largest creative communities, connecting people across more than 240 cities through events that celebrate creativity, generosity, and human connection.

The Benefit program will also include dinner, drinks, a paddle raise, and performances and testimonials from MacDowell Fellows. Featured Fellows include bestselling author Nicholas Boggs ('11, '21), playwright, filmmaker Ira Sachs ('01) and writer and choreographer Rachel Dickstein ('25), whose work will be performed with a member of Rhiannon Giddens’ Silkroad Ensemble.

All proceeds from the National Benefit support MacDowell’s mission to provide uninterrupted time, space, and community for artists to create bold and enduring works of the imagination.

Ticket and sponsorship packages for the Benefit can be made at the link below. For more information about the Benefit, or ways to support MacDowell, please contact our Benefit Office at (212)-465-3215 or via email.

Sade Lythcott is the Chief Executive Officer of the historic National Black Theatre (NBT), the nation’s first revenue-generating Black arts complex and one of the longest-running theaters led by a woman of color. A proud Harlem native, she is the daughter of the late Dr. Barbara Ann Teer, the visionary founder of NBT and a legendary champion of African-American arts and culture.

Sade is a staunch advocate for women and people of color in the cultural sector. She serves as chair of the Coalition of Theaters of Color and sits on the boards of the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) and the 125th Street Business Improvement District. She is a founding member of the Theatre and Live Performance Industry Council (TLPIC) and serves on the advisory boards of the Black Genius Foundation, Art in a Changing America, and the HueArts NYC Project.

Sade also co-leads Culture @ 3, an unprecedented cross-sector space convening over 1,000 of New York City’s nonprofit cultural leaders, funders, and elected officials to address urgent field-wide issues. In 2021, she was appointed to the Governor’s Task Force to reopen live performance venues across New York State, and later selected by the incoming New York City Mayor to co-lead the Parks, Arts & Culture transition committee, shaping the blueprint for the city’s post-pandemic cultural recovery.

An activist for socio-spatial justice, Sade is leading NBT’s ambitious $100 million capital redevelopment project, reimagining the cultural corridor of 125th Street and Fifth Avenue in Harlem. Slated to open in 2027, the multi-use arts complex will house NBT’s new home, affordable housing for artists, and commercial and civic space for Harlem’s small businesses and creative communities. The project will serve as a global destination for Black theater and anchor Harlem’s identity as the cultural capital of the Black world.

Sade regularly speaks and lectures on the intersection of arts, activism, and spatial justice at institutions including Harvard, Yale, Columbia, and NYU. She has contributed to the Center for an Urban Future’s City of Aspiration and has spoken on the cultural sector’s role in spatial equity at the National Endowment for the Arts and the Center for Architecture.

Her leadership and advocacy have been recognized by Town & Country (“Agent of Change”), New York Times, New York Magazine, Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, Marie Claire and Madame Architect, and Oprah Daily, which named her one of the “Black trailblazers moving our world forward.”

As a TONY® Award-winning and EMMY®-nominated producer, Sade is a multi-hyphenate creative who expresses her worldview through writing, production, and design. She wrote and produced the acclaimed musical A Time To Love (recipient of three AUDELCO nominations), which is now in development in partnership with the Apollo Theater.

Before her executive leadership at NBT, Sade performed on Off-Broadway stages, including roles alongside Chadwick Boseman in Urban Transitions: Loose Blossoms at New Federal Theatre (directed by Woodie King, Jr.), and as Dorothy Dandridge in Dorothy Dandridge: Before, After & Now (directed by Dr. Teer). Her work has earned her numerous accolades, including the Key to Harlem for Excellence in the Arts, an OBIE Award for Sustained Excellence in Production and Advocacy on Behalf of Black Artists, and the Segal Center’s Change Maker “Frankie” Award.

Earlier in her career, Sade worked as an associate producer for MTV’s flagship program Total Request Live (TRL), before transitioning into fashion journalism, styling, and design. Her clientele included artists such as Lenny Kravitz and Beyoncé Knowles-Carter.

Sade holds a BA in Art History from New York University. In her spare time, she explores sacred space design rooted in indigenous practice and embraces the joys of motherhood with her son, Thelonious.

Tina Roth Eisenberg is a Swiss-born, raised, and trained graphic designer based in New York.

She is the founder of CreativeMornings, a global community that brings together kind, heart-centered humans who believe in the power of creativity and generosity. What began as a small breakfast lecture series in New York has grown into a movement spanning 258 cities in 73 countries, gathering 25,000 creatives every month, for free.

CreativeMornings is Tina’s love letter to humanity, rooted in her belief that the world we make when we stand in a place of creativity and optimism is fundamentally different from the world we make out of fear.

At her core, Tina is a builder: of ideas, of networks, and of spaces where creativity and human connection can thrive.

The Marian MacDowell Arts Advocacy Award honors those who profoundly and uniquely support artists, aligning with our founder Marian MacDowell’s legacy and her championship of artists as they create bold new works that spark our imagination, illuminate our world, and celebrate our humanity.

The Hillcrest Arts Impact Award recognizes institutional or corporate leaders whose contributions to the arts and culture sector have had a profound impact on the work, wellbeing, and amplification of artists. Named for Hillcrest, the historic home of Edward and Marian MacDowell, the award honors the creative and entrepreneurial spirit of MacDowell’s founders who worked tirelessly from the seed of an idea to build and sustain a vibrant organization supporting artists across the United States and around the world.

A two-time MacDowell Fellow, Nicholas Boggs ('11, '21) is the author of the New York Times bestselling biography, Baldwin: A Love Story (FSG, 2025), winner of the National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Prize, the PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography, the Stonewall/Israel Fishman Nonfiction Award, the Randy Shilts Nonfiction Award, and the American Book Award. It was named a Top Ten Book of 2025 by Time magazine and The Atlantic, and was a New York Times Notable Book of the year. In addition, it was also recognized with an Audie Award for Best Audiobook in History/Biography.

Boggs also co-edited a new edition of Baldwin's collaboration with French artist Yoran Cazac, Little Man, Little Man: A Story of Childhood (2018). His research and writing have been supported by fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Humanities Center, the Gilder Lehrman Center and Beinecke Library at Yale, the Scholars-in-Residence Program at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, and the Leon Levy Center for Biography, as well as a 2023 Whiting Creative Nonfiction Grant. He was educated at Yale (BA), American University (MFA), and Columbia (PhD). He lives in New York City.

Ira Sachs is a NYC-based filmmaker whose feature films include The Man I Love, Peter Hujar’s Day, Passages, Frankie, Little Men, Love is Strange, Keep the Lights On, and Forty Shades of Blue. A Rockefeller, Guggenheim, MacDowell, and Yaddo Fellow, Sachs’s work is held in the permanent collections of New York’s Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney. He is also the Founding Director of Queer|Art, an arts organization built to support mentorship for LGBTQ+ artists and born out of the recognition of a generation of artists and audiences lost to the AIDS crisis.