The Design Trust for Public Space community is deeply saddened and in mourning following the passing of our longtime Board Member Theodore Berger last week, and in awe of the incredibly full life he lived.

It’s difficult to summarize just how much of an impact Ted has had on the creative soul of New York City. He leaves behind a legacy as a trailblazer for the arts, cultural policy, and for New York, having advanced economic and structural support for artists and cultural organizations that continue to define life around the city and the state. Ted is an integral part of the Design Trust’s origin story, and we will continue to honor his vision for a city that celebrates and makes the arts accessible for all.

As the Executive Director of the New York Foundation for the Arts for over thirty years, serving on dozens of boards and helping to create new organizations, Ted’s career was defined by seeing the arts as a tool for equity and progress, and building resources to ensure the survival of the city's creative venues. 

To know Ted is to see his imagination for a better future. Through New York’s waves of political unrest, social and economic downturn, and public health crises, Ted built intergenerational coalitions that saw arts and culture as a cornerstone of democracy and a right for all New Yorkers, regardless of race, class, or gender. Celebrating his 85th birthday and 61st wedding anniversary last year, Ted still remained an active contributor to our work through the end of his life, always bringing whimsy, generosity, and tangible invaluable strategic thinking to our mission to unlock the potential of NYC’s public spaces. 

As he told us in an interview for the public space blog last year on being honored at the Benefit for Public Space for a lifetime of arts and culture advocacy, “At one point in my life, interestingly, I had thought about becoming an architect. And I can remember as a child, in the Sunday papers there used to be these architectural plans, and I would take tracing paper and go over it. What I liked was the idea that from something on paper, one could have a vision of how something could grow. I think I’m still a little kid drawing on the floor.”

Hear more from the many lives touched by Ted Berger and record your own memory here.