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Founders Award with Martha Ingram

2016 Founders Award Honoring Martha Ingram
The Founders Award was established by the Trustees of the Charleston Library Society to recognize an institution or individual who has helped us appreciate and understand our past and its relationship to the future. The award honors the 19 young men who collaborated in 1748 to promote knowledge and shared learning by establishing the Library Society, one of America's earliest centers of community learning, the 2nd oldest circulating library in America, and the oldest cultural institution in the South.

Martha Robinson Rivers Ingram was born in Charleston and since 1995, she has served as Chairman of Ingram Industries in Nashville, Tennessee. While she is a respected executive in the corporate world, she is even better known for her passion for the arts and her extraordinary philanthropy to education and the arts in Nashville. Here in Charleston, she serves on the board of the Spoleto Festival USA. More significantly, her commitment to launch the complete renovation of the Gaillard Performance Center will provide a remarkably beautiful space "where creativity will be nurtured and a building where people will come together in the sharing of endeavors, ideas, and dreams." Given that the young founders of the Library Society sought to establish an organization to promote these same goals, it is especially appropriate that we honor Mrs. Rivers during the year that the Gaillard reopens.