Peter and Cathy Halstead
Co-Founders
Cathy and Peter Halstead have known each other since they were 16. They both grew up in families that for generations have sought to bring art and education to communities both in the United States and abroad. They were later classmates at both Columbia and NYU. Cathy is an abstract painter, who has shown around the world. Peter is a pianist, photographer, novelist, and poet.
Cathy worked with her father in the liquor company he founded with her in 1972, and ultimately became President and Chairman.
Cathy and Peter are also the founders of the Adrian Brinkerhoff Poetry Foundation, which works to expand access to poetry and educational materials about poetry. Its website gathers outstanding poems from many places, eras, and traditions, and features films of poets reciting their works, presented in partnership with Poetry Ireland, Poet in the City, The Academy of American Poets, and New York’s 92nd Street Y. Peter has published ten volumes of poems and photos. His six-album piano series, “The Himalaya Sessions,” for The Adrian Brinkerhoff Foundation, will be online this year. Seven volumes of Peter’s poetry are so far available: Sea Sun, Blinds, Poems of Earth, Paris Poems I, Postcard Poems, Face Your Dreams, Sublimation. Coming are Paris Poems II, Poems 2015-2017, and Poems 2019-2022. He has published A Winter Ride and with Cathy Tippet Rise and Tippet Rise: Beginnings. He is working with Princeton Architectural Press on a book about Francis Kéré’s Xylem and the Naaba Belem Goumma Secondary School, built in honor of Francis’ father.
Cathy and Peter founded the Digital Lab in the Rockefeller Library at Brown, where Cathy is a Member Emerita of the Corporation. Cathy is on the board of Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors and of the Storm King Art Center.
She and Peter are trustees of the Sidney E. Frank Foundation, which makes over ninety grants annually to charities in the United States and England. Grantees include Storm King Art Center, The Colburn School, Glyndebourne Opera, Brown University, the Chamber Music Society, New Leaders, and the Aspen and Vail Music Festivals.
The foundation has helped fund films of the Glyndebourne version of La Traviata and Don Pasquale, as well as a film of Brian Bedford’s The Importance of Being Earnest on Broadway. In England, it has digitized the filmed repertoire of the National Theatre, the Royal Shakespeare Company, and Shakespeare’s Globe. It has digitized the repertoire of The Cleveland Orchestra, and helped fund a film about Patrick Dougherty, Stickworks. It has provided high-end audio equipment to the Aspen Music Festival, the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon, and the Swan Theatre in London.
The foundation also supports diverse efforts in Montana in the arts and education. Cathy and Peter were inspired to found Tippet Rise by the Storm King Art Center, TICKON Sculpture Park in Denmark, la fondation Maeght in St.-Paul-de-Vence, Snape Maltings in England, and by the Vail and Aspen Music Festivals.
Cathy and Peter have two wonderful daughters and two adorable grandchildren.
