Working Toward Gender Equality in the Performing Arts

How the Virginia B. Toulmin Foundation is Moving Women in the Arts to Center Stage

“Since working with Toulmin and TCC, we have been able to put our thumb on the scale and use every device at our disposal to promote women composers whose works demonstrate either excellent work or the potential for it.” – Marc A. Scorca President Emeritus, Opera America

For Alexander Sanger it was one of those sudden, out-of-nowhere epiphanies. “Late one night in 2013,” he says, “it occurred to me that I’d never heard a single opera—or, for that matter, a symphony or ballet—created by a woman.”

The idea took hold and didn’t let go. As one of three trustees of the Virginia B. Toulmin Foundation, Sanger was convinced that the Foundation had a role to play in shrinking the gender gap in the performing arts through commissioning new works by women.

“Virginia’s focus was on those three passions,” says Sanger. “But she left no directives about funding strategies or amounts, nor did she restrict our decision-making in any way. She understood that the world would change, organizations would change—and societal needs would change. I have no doubt that she would have embraced the idea with tremendous enthusiasm.”

In 2013, Sanger, with the help of TCC President and CEO Richard Mittenthal, presented the idea of a women-centered commissions program to Opera America, the national service organization for opera. Alex recalls “I asked Marc Scorca, then-CEO, ‘Of the last 100 operas premiered in this country, how many were composed by women?’ There was a long silence. He began counting on his fingers, got to one and paused. “That’s when I said, ‘I’m here to change this. Are you in or out?’ He asked for time to think. He called a day later and said they were in.”

Sanger and Mittenthal understood that making the idea work would require meaningful buy-in from leading performing arts organizations. “We knew who they were, but not how they were structured or who their leaders were. Richard’s knowledge of the terrain was invaluable in getting us before the people we needed to talk to.” Alex and Richard next spoke with The League of American Orchestras.  Soon, the New York City Ballet and American Ballet Theatre followed suit, and the Virginia B. Toulmin Foundation Program for Commissioning Women in the Performing Arts was born.

“TCC manages nine foundations that have chosen to operate unstaffed,” says Mittenthal. “So we are experienced in the ways a consulting firm can add meaningful value in the absence of a paid staff.” This expertise with planning and foundational grantmaking, combined with more than 40 years of providing strategic and capacity-building guidance for arts organizations, meant that “we knew their commitment to the arts matched Virginia’s,” says Sanger.

From the early days of the Women’s Initiative, TCC has played an active advisory role, managing contacts with grantmaking organizations, meeting on site with boards and not-for-profit theaters, orchestras and ballet companies and making recommendations on grant requests.

The program’s impact on the performing arts world has since been nothing short of game-changing. “About a dozen years ago, we took stock of the past quarter-century of opera grantmaking and saw that maybe 5% of had gone to works by women composers,” Scorca says. “Since then, working with Toulmin and TCC, we have been able to put our thumb on the scale and use every device at our disposal to promote women composers whose works demonstrate either excellent work or the potential for it.” Today, 50% of the applications received by Opera America are from women composers and fully 50% of its grants are to women composers. In the symphonic world, the growth has been similarly dramatic: Women accounted for 4 percent of new orchestral works in 2013; today, the figure is 30 percent.

A program dedicated to supporting women in the arts beautifully reflects Virginia Toulmin’s lifelong passion for empowering women and advancing their place in society. Notably, a number of Toulmin’s commissions have garnered top honors at some of the world’s most prestigious awards platforms. Composer Ellen Reid won the 2019 Pulitzer Prize in opera for Prism as well as Best New Opera from Music Critics Association of North America (MCANA).

Missy Mazzoli’s Breaking the Waves was likewise honored by the MCANA and was shortlisted for “Best World Premiere” Prize at the International Opera Awards. Adds Mittenthal, “The Toulmin program has changed the face of the performing arts in the U.S. Outstanding women composers whose voices might never have been heard now have an opportunity to hear their works being recognized and premiered by leading orchestras.”

To date, Toulmin remains the first—and only—foundation focusing exclusively on women in the performing arts through commissions of new works. “Women composers are far more central to what’s taking place in American opera today than they were as recently as a decade ago,” Scorca says. A case in point: For several years, Toulmin grantee Laura Kaminsky’s “As One” ranked as the single most performed opera in North America.

“There is still progress to be made,” Sanger says. “But it is a measure of how far we’ve come when creative artists speak with pride about having won a ‘Toulmin.’”