Gala 2024

Join us for the 2024 Gala, our biggest fundraiser of the year! Help us honor Russell Sage College President Christopher Ames and enjoy an evening of sparkling conversation, amazing art, and community spirit at this year’s event.

Support for the 2024 Gala is support for the Arts Center

The mission of the Arts Center of the Capital Region is to help people create and engage with the arts. 

Throughout our 61 year history, we have helped millions to realize their goals through the power of creativity. in addition to our year round studio-based classes, we produce public art projects and exhibitions, offer artist-training programs, and regrant NYS funds to artists and organizations. 

In 2023, the Arts Center saw 40,000 people walk through our doors. We helped 1600 students begin or continue their creative journey. We awarded $510,000 in grant funding to local artists and nonprofit organizations. We welcomed 401 kids to our summer camp program, 50 of whom were scholarship recipients. And! We produced the USA Today Award Winning Troy Art Block, a mural project spanning two blocks with 29 artists making 27 murals. 

Help Us Honor Russell Sage College President Chris Ames

Christopher Ames is the tenth president of Russell Sage College. A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the University of Texas Austin, Ames earned a Ph.D. in English Literature at Stanford University. He taught twentieth-century literature and film for fifteen years at Agnes Scott College, a liberal arts college for women in Atlanta. He has published two books: The Life of the Party: Festive Vision in Modern Fiction and Movies About Movies: Hollywood Reflected. Ames served as Provost and Senior Vice President at Oglethrope University in Atlanta and as Provost and Dean of the COllege at Washington College on the eastern shore of Maryland. 

Before coming to Sage, he was Provost at Shepherd University, the public liberal arts university of West Virginia, located in Sherpherdstown, just outside of the metropolitan D.C. area. He is a graduate of Harvard’s Institute of Educational Management and the Aspen Institute of Executive Seminar on Leadership. 

In June 2023, Ames will retire from Russell Sage after seven years, during which he moved Russell Sage from a once-precarious financial position to five consecutive years of budget surpluses and fundraising efforts that yielded more than $30 million to advance the college. In 2020, under his leadership, the college, divided into an all-women’s college in Troy and a co-educational college in Albany, merged and rebranded into one institution under the Russell Sage College name. it is now a co-educational institution with dynamic campuses in Albany and Troy, offering bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral programs to more than 2,100 students.