Kore That Awakening Purchase Completed

The Niwot Cultural Arts Association's effort to raise $25,000 to purchase a sculpture from Ukrainian artist Egor Zigura was a success. NCAA Treasurer Vicki Maurer reported that the funds have been transferred to Zigura's agent, based in New York, to complete the purchase.

The NCAA's sculpture park committee, Lisa Rivard, Anne Postle and Jill Whitener, set out to raise enough money to purchase the sculpture for Niwot's Sculpture Park at the southwest corner of Niwot Road and 79th Street, on April 1, 2022.

Fundraising events and many private donations produced approximately $20,000 for the fund by June, and the donations required to reach the goal came in July.

Diane Trister Dodge, who lives north of Niwot, offered a matching grant of $2,500 toward the purchase of the sculpture if other donors could raise the same amount. On July 26, she presented a check to the Niwot Cultural Arts Association for $2,500, which completed the $25,000 needed to purchase the sculpture.

Dodge wrote, "It is a beautiful sculpture, and I am making this contribution to honor my paternal grandmother, Esther Popkin, who was born April 15, 1889 in Kiev, the youngest of ten children. Many of her older siblings came to America, and one brother brought Esther to the United States. She lived with him in Jersey City, J.J., and worked to repay him for her passage to this country, until she met my grandfather, Jacob Betcher, who had emigrated in 1905 from Prodno, Poland."

She enclosed her grandmother's wedding photo.

The purchase is the first in a planned series of annual purchases by the NCAA, and the Ukrainian artist's work was already in the sculpture park when the war broke out with Russia.