What Do We See When We Stand on the Shoulders of Giants?

This month Illinois Humanities hosted its 50th anniversary gala. It was a long-anticipated event. Irrespective of this year's vagaries of Federal funding we were committed to honoring our five decades of mission-driven work to activate the humanities for every resident in Illinois.

We staged the evening in three acts, with a forward, a dinner intermission, and an epilogue: Dancing through the Decades!

I felt a lot of pressure as the day of the event approached: how could we possibly do justice to all of the people whose work preceded mine and my team's? As the program unfolded in the presence of more than 400 guests from around the state, my worries melted away. The wall-length timeline, the gallery walk of posters and photographs, the DIY photo book that let people walk away with snapshots, the colorful table settings with stacked book centerpieces, and the one-of-a-kind auction items featuring a print from Bisa Butler, photos of Cairo, IL, by Danny Lyon, a getaway to Paris with all-access passes to historic libraries, and a behind-the-scenes look at Revolutionary-War period documents at the Newberry, meant everyone could find a way to be part of the celebration and fuel our future.

Our gala made it clear we are what we always have been: committed to centering the lives and experiences of all Illinoisians, irrespective of race, zip code, or economic status. For a half-century, Illinois Humanities has invested in people, places, and organizations that make and protect our ability to humanize each other. From our earliest grants to "The Public Square," to the Odyssey Project and Envisioning Justice, to Road Scholars, Museum on Main Street, and our newest programs, A People's Salon and Community Conversations, we invest in the humanities to ensure the residents of our state have the opportunities, skills, and experiences to be our most fully human selves.

What do we see when we stand on the shoulders of giants? That we are who we have always been, but what we do is more important now than it has ever been.

One highlight of the evening was meant to be a reading of “If They Take Her,” a prize-winning poem by Dalila Martinez from our 2025 Gwendolyn Brooks Youth Poetry Competition. The author, a high school senior, was unable to attend the event due to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) activity. Instead, a staff member read her poem for her while the words of the poem and photos of the author were projected on a screen.

The poem closes,

"I wonder,

if they take her, who will I become?"

When a young person and her family are unable to travel 8 miles to read a poem out loud, when local museums and libraries are unable to rely on government support, and when community histories are being diminished or actively erased, it is clear that our work is more urgent and important now than when we were founded in 1974. You can watch the remarks I gave at the gala about this HERE.

Illinois Humanities has been building these muscles for 50 years. And we are stepping up to meet this moment with a statewide community of hundreds of organizations that are now - and have always been - committed to the people they serve. We are honoring the stories our Illinois places and spaces preserve, and making it possible for people to meet each other where they are at, to ensure we are all able to travel on our human journey into the future, together.

- Gabrielle H. Lyon