Margulies Honored at 8th Annual Children's Arts Award Benefit

Young Audiences New York (YANY) will recognize four preeminent honorees for their contributions to the arts and advocacy of children's arts education at its 8th annual Children's Arts Award Benefit, to be held Monday, March 9 at Cipriani - Wall Street. The 2009 Children's Arts Awards will be presented to: Artist Honoree Julianna Margulies, Emmy-award winning actor; Media Honoree Rino Scanzoni, chief investment officer, GroupM North America & chairman - Mediaedge:cia North America; and Humanitarian Honorees Kathy Eldon (CEO and co-founder) and Amy Eldon Turteltaub, (executive vice president and co-founder) of Creative Visions Foundation.

YANY has been advancing arts education in NYC public schools for more than 50 years, and has steadily grown into one of the city's leading providers of diverse and innovative arts programs for schools in five boroughs. In addition to honoring the award recipients, this year's benefit will feature YANY-supported performances by NYC public school students. The evening will be hosted by Rocco DiSpirito, noted author and chef. Benefit co-chairs include Griffin Dunne, Trudie Styler, Mickey Sumner and Denise Weimann. Additional distinguished guests will include fashion designer Donna Karan, GroupM CEO Irwin Gotlieb, Fox Broadcast President Jon Nesvig and CEO Jones Broadcast Group Earl Jones. Previous Arts Award Honorees include entertainers Vanessa Williams, Matthew Modine, Gregory Hines, Brian Stokes Mitchell, Wynton Marsalis and Richard Thomas.

Each year, YANY devotes an evening to honor leaders from the fields of business, media and entertainment who support children's arts education. This year's honorees serve as advocates and partners in the belief that arts education can enrich a child's creative, emotional and intellectual life.

"Providing support for well-rounded arts education programming is more critical than ever in today's economic climate of school budget cuts and program reductions," said John G. Schultz, YANY (www.yany.org) executive director. "We are delighted to honor these outstanding individuals who have made extraordinary contributions to the arts and have observed first-hand the positive impact YANY arts programming has on children in the 180 New York City public schools the organization serves."
For benefit ticket information, please contact Lauren Fishman Events at 212-355-5702 or ljfishman@aol.com. Individual ticket contributions are $600 - $2,500. Tables are $6,000-$25,000. Proceeds will support YANY arts programming and residencies for NYC public schools.

Young Audiences New York: Creativity to Change the World
Young Audiences New York is a leading multi-disciplinary arts and culture-based program provider. With more than 50 years of arts-in-education expertise, Young Audiences provides innovative and diverse programs to children Pre-K-12 that promote creativity and academic achievement, teach essential life and learning skills and provide opportunities for children and families to learn together, all of which support the development of a well-rounded individual.

Young Audiences New York, a chapter of the national Young Audiences organization, has been advancing arts education in New York City public schools since 1952. Beginning as a modest series of chamber music recitals, YANY has taken the lead to ensure that children receive the arts programming that is so critical to social, personal and academic development. As of December 1, 2008, YANY is increasing the amount of subsidy monies available through any of its programs -- residencies, performances, family programs and professional development -- to help lessen the financial strain on city schools. "YANY strongly believes that even in a time of financial crisis, providing children with arts-infused curriculum in dance, music, theater, literary and visual arts is not expendable," said Mr. Schultz. In the last academic year, Young Audiences programs have reached 235,000 pre-kindergarten through 12th grade students in 180 underserved schools.

Honoree: Julianna Margulies, Emmy-Award-Winning Actor
Julianna Margulies is a critically acclaimed television, film and stage actor whose roles have ranged from Medieval High Priestess (in the TNT miniseries "The Mists of Avalon") to a Broadway run as the wild child of a remarkably dysfunctional modern family ("Festen"). Julianna began her television career with appearances in series such as "Law and Order" and "Homicide: Life on the Street." Her role in the pilot episode of "ER" was originally scripted as a single episode stint, but after overwhelmingly strong audience reaction to her portrayal of Nurse Carol Hathaway the character remained on the show for six seasons, with Julianna receiving an Emmy Award, six Emmy nominations, two Screen Actor Guild Awards, and four Golden Globe nominations. Julianna's film resume begins in the 1991 action thriller "Out for Justice", following which she has gone on to critically lauded and markedly varied leading roles in films including "The Man from Elysian Fields", and the upcoming "City Island", which reunites her with her "Elysian Fields" co-star Andy Garcia. On the stage, her role in "The Substance of Fire" at the Aoslo Theater has been succeeded by commanding performances in Yale Repertory's "Fefu and her Friends", "Ten Unknowns" at Lincoln Center (for which she received the Lucille Lortel Award), MCC Theater's "Intrigue With Fay", "The Vagina Monologues" at the Westside Arts Theater and most recently, "Festen" on Broadway.

Julianna provides hands-on support for groups addressing a number of issues, including Lou Gehrig's disease, AIDS, and political activism, as well as promotion of the arts. Support for the theater arts has long been a passion for Julianna, and keeping theater alive and making it accessible to youth - as well as to the public at large - is one of her primary concerns. She sits on the board of MCC Theater and is an active fundraiser for New York theater.

Honoree: Rino Scanzoni, Chief Investment Officer, GroupM North America & Chairman - Mediaedge:cia North America
Rino Scanzoni was executive vice president, managing director of MediaVest Entertainment, which specialized in media planning and implementation for the entertainment industry until December 2000. MediaVest Entertainment represented Paramount Pictures and Home Video and was a division of MediaVest North America, part of the Starcom MediaVest Group. Prior to the formation of MediaVest Entertainment in 1999, Scanzoni served as executive vice president and director of national broadcast for MediaVest and prior to that TeleVest and D'Arcy Masius Benton & Bowles, a position he assumed in April 1990. Under his management of the national broadcast group, billings tripled as a result of additional assignments from key clients as well as significant new business growth. Scanzoni is currently responsible for all trading activity across GroupM in North America and was named chairman of MEC in March 2007.

Honoree: Kathy Eldon, CEO and Co-Founder, Creative Visions Foundation
The Creative Visions Foundation supports people, especially the young, who use media, technology and the arts to create awareness of social, environmental or humanitarian issues and effect positive change in local and global communities. (http://www.creativevisions.org). Creative Visions Foundation was founded by Dan Eldon's mother and sister, Kathy Eldon and Amy Eldon Turteltaub, following his death in Mogadishu working as a photographer for Reuters News Agency in 1993. The foundation was formed to celebrate Dan Eldon and others like him who use their creativity as a means of positive social change.
Kathy Eldon, a graduate of Wellesley, has worked as an art teacher, television presenter, magazine editor, journalist, media consultant and a television and film producer in Kenya, England and the United States. In addition to writing 16 books, Kathy has executive produced and launched several projects for film and television, including the PBS series, "Global Tribe", produced and hosted by Amy Eldon. In l999, Kathy exec-produced a-one hour CNN documentary, "Soldiers of Peace : A Children's Crusade", about the Colombian children's peace movement, nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. Both films were distributed internationally to over 220 countries. Kathy's company also produced "Lost in Africa", a family feature film distributed by Columbia Pictures internationally. Kathy is currently developing and producing a features film about her son, Dan Eldon.

Honoree: Amy Eldon Turteltaub, Executive Vice President and Co-Founder, Creative Visions Foundation
Amy Eldon Turteltaub, a graduate of Boston University's College of Communications, is an author and the executive vice president of Creative Visions Productions. She is currently in production with "Every Woman Counts", a series of PSA's about remarkable women for Lifetime; "Moms on a Mission", a series about the power of mothers to change the world around them hosted by Julia Roberts for the Oprah Winfrey Network; and "Star Power, Five Days to Change the World", co-produced with the United Nations for VH-1. Amy, the author of four guided journals, was the host of Emmy-nominated documentary "Dying to tell the Story", and "Global Tribe", a PBS series about everyday heroes. She is the cofounder of the Creative Visions Foundation and serves on the board of Free the Children, Global Nomads Group and One Kid One World.

Photo Credit: Walter McBride/Retna Ltd.