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Andrew HeiskellAndrew Heiskell
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Session:         Page of 824

events that would bring people who have money to the Library, so they could actually see it, feel it, know it. The first great idea there came from Dick Salomon, who suggested that we have an annual dinner for the literary lions. At each table there would be a famous writer. Somebody would buy the table and invite people who either had money or had the power to get money, to the Library and we would have a grand dinner in the Library. Actually we had it in three of the special collection rooms. And then we would get together after the dinner and have a short reading or a short performance, or what have you.

By devices such as those multiplied and multiplied and multiplied, a lot of people, important people, suddenly realized that the library existed. Finally we even had lions for the performing arts event in the Lincoln Center Research Library, and that's become an annual event. The next one is at the end of this month. Then we began doing things for Schomburg so that people would get to know about that. Then we began lobbying in Washington and in Albany. The National Endowment for the Humanities had been giving us a good deal of help for quite a few years. We managed to get it up to two million dollars a year, which was a great help. In fact, in 1985 we got a three year commitment of two million dollars a year, which is rather nice because everybody was a little bit nervous about what was going to happen.

Q:

Nervous about what?

Heiskell:

Nervous about what was going to happen to the Endowment,





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