Aspen Institute

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The Aspen Institute is a U.S. nonprofit cultural organization founded in 1950 dedicated to "fostering enlightened leadership and open-minded dialogue." The institute is headquartered in Washington, D.C. and has campuses in Aspen, Colorado (its original home), New York City, Santa Barbara, California, and Queenstown, Maryland. The institute holds regular seminars, policy programs, conferences and leadership development initiatives, with the goal of promoting nonpartisan inquiry and "an appreciation for timeless values."

The Aspen Institute is largely funded by foundations such as the Carnegie Corporation, The Rockefeller Brothers Fund and the Ford Foundation, by seminar fees, and by individual donations. Its board of trustees include many wealthy and powerful individuals who also contribute generously to its support; Walter Isaacson is currently President and CEO.

[edit] History

The Institute was largely the creation of Walter Paepcke, a Chicago businessman who had become inspired by the Great Books program of Mortimer Adler at the University of Chicago. In 1945, Paepcke visited the decaying former mining town of Aspen in the Roaring Fork Valley and was inspired by its natural beauty, envisioning that it could be transformed into a place where artists, leaders, thinkers, musicians from all over the world could gather in a place secluded from their daily lives. In 1949, in order to help fulfill his vision, Paepcke organized a 20-day international celebration for the 200th birthday of German poet and philosopher Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. The celebration attracted over 2,000 attendees, including many notable international intellectual and artistic figures of the day, including Albert Schweitzer, Jose Ortega y Gasset, Thornton Wilder, and Arthur Rubinstein.

The following year, in 1950, Paepcke founded the Aspen Institute, and later the Aspen Music Festival and the Aspen International Design Competition. In 1951, the Institute sponsored a national photography conference attended by many of the nation's most noted photographers, including Ansel Adams, Dorothea Lange, Ben Shahn and Berenice Abbott. During the 1960s and 1970s, the Institute further expanded with the addition of new organizations, programs, and conferences, including the Aspen Center for Physics, the Aspen Strategy Group, Communications and Society Program and other programs that concentrated on education, communications, justice, Asian thought, science, technology, the environment, and international affairs.

In 1979, through a donation by Corning Glass industrialist and philanthropist Arthur A. Houghton, Jr. the Institute acquired an additional 1,000 acre (4 km²) campus on the eastern shore of the Chesapeake Bay in Maryland, known today as the Wye River Conference Centers.

In 2005 the first Aspen Ideas Festival was held, featuring leading minds from around the world sharing and speaking on global issues.