The HRM’s Annual Gala is our most important fundraiser of the year. This year, on Friday, June 2, we will gather to celebrate four outstanding honorees, including the Eugene M. Lang Foundation, represented here by actor Stephen Lang, a trustee of the Foundation.

The Eugene M. Lang Foundation is a private family foundation that seeks to effect change in the areas of arts and culture, education, health and human services, and justice. The Foundation prioritizes giving to programs and organizations that are demonstrably creative in concept and excellent in substance; that elevate people’s spirits, goals and capacities above the level of basic needs, primarily through opportunities for meaningful education, participation in the arts and civic activity, and enhanced health education and social services; and that promote inventiveness and entrepreneurship. Stephen Lang, shown here at a reception at the HRM, is one of six trustees of the Eugene M. Lang Foundation. He has earned enduring critical and popular acclaim over the course of a distinguished career as an actor in theater, television, and film, including Death of a Salesman and Hamlet on Broadway and the films Tombstone, Gettysburg, and the Avatar saga, to name a few.

The Foundation is receiving this year’s Isidore Konti Medal, which is named in honor of one of the Museum’s illustrious founders. A successful sculptor, Konti was a true patron of the arts as well as a devoted public servant, working to bring art and culture to life in Yonkers through strong community work. The Eugene M. Lang Foundation embodies this spirit with their generous support of the HRM’s Junior Docent teen leadership program.

Now in its twenty-eighth year, the Junior Docent Program is an after-school leadership and youth development program that serves students (grades 9–12) from public high schools throughout Yonkers. It is a nationally recognized model for teen programming that annually provides approximately 70 at-risk youth with services and expands their knowledge of art, science, and history, while building and strengthening their skills in communication, critical thinking, problem solving, and leadership. Since its inception in 1995, 100% of Junior Docents who have completed the Program have been accepted to college.

Image: Stephen Lang at Hudson River Museum’s opening reception for World of Frida and Frida Kahlo in Context, February 2022. Photo by Jason Green.