The Aspen Institute
To support tribal communities that are utilizing civic engagement for opportunity youth engagement, leadership and curriculum development, and community designed workshops
Civics, Citizens, Country
About
Mission
The DTG Foundation advances the principles of America’s founding documents through educational programs for students across all media so that our young Americans can be better informed about the founding of our republic and the citizens who created the founding documents. A greater understanding of our American principles and ideas will lead to more informed citizens and voters.
Values and Vision
To further the understanding of why the acts of all citizens can make a difference. This can be accomplished through art projects, cultural institutions, educational institutions and worthy individuals. By providing strategic grants this foundation works to further the understanding of our Constitutional principles.
Dorothy Tapper Goldman (1944-2023) was a force—curious, determined, adventurous, and fun, with a great sense of humor and an infectious laugh.
© Gitty Darugar
Dorothy Tapper Goldman (1944-2023) was a force—curious, determined, adventurous, and fun, with a great sense of humor and an infectious laugh. She was a wonderful person to be friends with, and an easy one as well. She was also a visionary with a deep feeling for democracy. She believed in it as the best and most noble form of government.
India, Southern
Dorothy and her beloved husband S. Howard Goldman (1930-1997) were stewards of an incomparable American founding document: one of only 14 original copies of the U.S. Constitution printed in 1787. After Howard’s death, Dorothy took their shared interest further by building an unmatched collection of more than 250 U.S. state constitutions and other important historical documents from throughout American history. She shared her collection with the public in Colonists, Citizens, and Constitution: Creating the American Republic, an exhibition that appeared at the New York Historical Society and the Museum of the American Revolution in 2020 and 2021. Her friend Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, wrote the foreword of the accompanying exhibition catalogue.
Later in her life, Dorothy decided to sell her collection, including the U.S. Constitution, and used the proceeds to establish the DTG Foundation. She had strong ideas about what she wanted the DTG Foundation to support and remained open to creative possibilities. Dedicated to furthering the understanding of American constitutional principles, the DTG Foundation provides grants for educational, artistic, and cultural initiatives that advance the civic ideals of America’s founding documents. This was Dorothy’s vision, and today, at one of the most decisive moments in American democracy, the DTG Foundation’s mission is more crucial than ever.
Goldman, Dorothy Tapper
January 13, 2014, India, Krishna mandapa (cave temple) at Mamallapuram
Dorothy approached her philanthropy as an educator. Raised in Cleveland, Ohio, she earned a B.S. in Education from Tufts University and an M.S. in Education from the Massachusetts College of Art. At the culmination of her professional career, she served as a tenured professor at Wentworth Institute of Technology in Boston, where she taught in the departments of Interior Design and Architecture. Earlier in her career she was a preschool teacher, later a practicing artist in her own right with a sculpture studio, and taught sculpture at an independent high school in the Boston suburbs. She had two children, Mark Polansky and Barbra Siskin. She was wildly proud of her two granddaughters, Mia and Avalon Siskin.
© Gitty Darugar Paris 2017 Dorothy Goldman
January 24, 2014, India, Hampi, ruins of Vijayanagar capital
Throughout her life Dorothy became involved with and gave generously to many historical and cultural organizations, including the New-York Historical Society, the Jewish Theological Seminary, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Smithsonian Museum of American Art, National Constitution Center, and the Supreme Court Historical Society. Dorothy also established and later endowed a Fellowship in Constitutional Studies for the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.
Dorothy named her daughter Barbra Siskin as the Executive Director of the DTG Foundation to find ways to create impact and continue the work she started.
Bio courtesy of Edward Hirsch, President, John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation
Grants
2024
Daraja Education Fund
To support the capital campaign and general operating expenses
ICivics
For general support
John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation
To support and endow the Constitutional Studies Fellowship
New Orleans Center for Creative Arts
To support the Visionary Fund, the Student Support Fund, and the capital campaign
New-York Historical Society
To support the Dorothy Tapper Goldman Center for Teaching Democracy, as well as the continuation and expansion of the Society’s education programming
Park Avenue Synagogue
To support the annual salaries of the Rabbinic and Cantorial Interns
Planned Parenthood Federation of America
To support Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast and greatest needs
Smithsonian American Art Museum
To support the re-installation of the museum’s permanent collection with a focus on incorporating Indigenous work and perspectives in the reinterpreted galleries for a more inclusive story of American art
Trombone Shorty Foundation
To support Youth Educational Programs, Cultural Experiences, and the Music Industry Program
Women’s Reproductive Rights Assistance Project
To support greatest needs
Since 2022, the Dorothy Tapper Goldman Foundation has awarded nearly $16,000,000 to a community of impactful partners:
California Academy of Sciences
Indigenous Research Internships and Visiting Scholars Program within the Tushingham Ethnoecology and Human Autonomy Lab
Daraja Education Fund
Capital campaign and General support
Four Way Books
General support
Grolier Club of the City of New York
To support an exhibition documenting the Jewish diaspora across time and space from the collections of the Jewish Theological Seminary
iCivics
General support
John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation
To endow the Constitutional Studies Fellowship
To establish a new Fellowship in Indigenous Studies
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Thomas J. Watson Library
Museum of the American Revolution
To research, pilot, and launch new historical simulations
New Orleans Center for Creative Arts Institute (NOCCA)
Student Support Fund, Visionary Fund, and the Capital Campaign
New-York Historical Society
Continuation and expansion of the Society’s educational programming
Dorothy Tapper Goldman Center for Teaching Democracy
General support
Park Avenue Synagogue
To support the Rabbinic and Cantorial Interns
Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Inc.
PP Gulf Coast and greatest need
Project Lazarus
General support
Smithsonian American Art Museum
To support the reinstallation of the museum’s permanent collection with a focus on incorporating Indigenous work and perspectives in the reinterpreted galleries for a more inclusive story of American art
The Troy Andrews Foundation dba Trombone Shorty Foundation
Youth Programs, Cultural Experiences, Music Industry Apprenticeship, and General Support
Tongabezi Trust School (via CAF America)
For the school’s library
Women’s Reproductive Rights Assistance Project
General support
Constitutional Fellows
Randy E. Barnett, 2008
Carmack Waterhouse Professor of Legal Theory, Georgetown University Law Center
Expertise
Legal theory, constitutional law and contracts
Project
The reconstructed Constitution
Richard Primus, 2008
Theodore J. St. Antoine Collegiate Professor of Law, University of Michigan
Expertise
Law, theory and history of the U.S. Constitution
Project
Constitutional authority in the wake of civil war
Risa L. Goluboff, 2009
Dean, University of Virginia School of Law
Expertise
American constitutional and civil rights law
Project
Vagrancy law in the 1960s: published as Vagrant Nation (Oxford U.P., 2016)
Lea VanderVelde, 2010
Josephine R. Witte Chair, University of Iowa College of Law
Expertise
U.S. legal history, constitutional law
Project
The Law of the Antebellum Frontier, 1796–1857
Stephen Gardbaum, 2011
Stephen Yeazell Endowed Chair in Law, UCLA School of Law
Expertise
Constitutional law and theory, international human rights
Project
The New Commonwealth Model of Constitutionalism (Cambridge U.P., 2013)
Asifa Quraishi-Landes, 2012
Professor of Law, University of Wisconsin–Madison Law School
Expertise
Comparative Islamic and U.S. constitutional law
Project
Islamic constitutionalism for the 21st century
Kristen Stilt, 2013
Professor of Law, Harvard Law School
Expertise
Islamic law and society; also animal law
Project
Constitutional Islam: genealogies, transmissions, and meanings
Holly Brewer, 2014
Burke Chair of American Cultural and Intellectual History and Associate Professor, History, University of Maryland
Expertise
Law in early American history and early British empire
Project
Inheritable Blood: Slavery and Sovereignty in Early America and the British Empire
Sarah Gordon, 2015
Arlin M. Adams Professor of Constitutional Law and Professor of History, University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School
Expertise
Law of church and state, religion in American public life
Project
Freedom’s Holy Light: Disestablishment in America, 1776–1876
David M. Rabban, 2016
Dahr Jamail, Randall Hage Jamail, and Robert Lee Jamail Regents Chair, The University of Texas at Austin School of Law
Expertise
Labor law, American legal history, higher education and the law
Project
Academic Freedom in the United States: History, Theory, Law
Linda Colley, 2017
Shelby M.C. Davis 1958 Professor of History, Princeton University
Expertise
British history, comparative constitutionalism
Project
The Sword and the Pen: Conflict and the Making of Constitutions
Carol Anderson, 2018
Charles Howard Candler Professor and Chair of African American Studies, Emory University
Expertise
Public policy regarding race, minority rights, and criminal justice
Project
The Second: Guns and A Most Deadly Double Standard at the Core of our Fundamental Rights
Brad Snyder, 2019
Professor of Law, Georgetown University Law Center
Expertise
Constitutional law, constitutional history, sports law
Project
Felix Frankfurter and the Creation of the Liberal Establishment
Bernadette Meyler, 2020
Carl and Sheila Spaeth Professor of Law, Stanford Law School
Expertise
Comparative law, constitutional history, constitutional law
Project
Common Law Originalism: The Constitution’s Contested Meanings
Amalia Kessler, 2021
Lewis Talbot and Nadine Hearn Shelton Professor of International Legal Studies, Stanford Law School
Expertise
Alternative dispute resolution, civil procedure and litigation, comparative law (more)
Project
Arbitration and the Remaking of the American State
Kimberly Yuracko, 2022
Judd and Mary Morris Leighton Professor of Law, Northwestern Law School
Expertise
Antidiscrimination law, across categories and contexts
Project
The Culture War Over Girls’ Sports: Transgender Rights and the Social Meaning of Sex and Sports
Edward B. Foley, 2023
Charles W. Ebersod and Florence Whitcomb Chair in Constitutional Law, Ohio State University; Director, Election Law at Ohio State
Expertise
Campaign finance, constitutional law, election law, voting rights
Project
Destroying Democracy by Law
Kim Lane Scheppele, 2024
Laurance S. Rockefeller Professor of Sociology and International Affairs and the University Center for Human Values, Princeton University; Faculty Fellow, University of Pennsylvania Law School
Expertise
The rise and fall of constitutional government
Project
Destroying Democracy by Law