Arsht Awards 2026

by Jake Cline

Each of the three recipients of the 2026 Arsht Awards has enjoyed a long relationship with the Adrienne Arsht Center. One's connection to the organization stretches back to its very beginning, when a major performing arts center in Miami-Dade County existed only as an idea shared by a few people. One became involved with the venue not long after its 2006 grand opening. And one was an early contributor to Arsht concert series Jazz Roots. Each honoree also exhibits a deep commitment to and enthusiasm for the county's ever-growing cultural scene and its many artists, patrons and fans.

Introduced in 2024, the Arsht Awards recognize individuals and organizations that have had a powerful effect on the Adrienne Arsht Center's mission to connect every resident of Miami-Dade County to the arts and one another. Previous recipients include educator Marshall L. Davis, gallerist Rosie Gordon-Wallace, the Knight Foundation and philanthropist Adrienne Arsht.

This year's class of Arsht Awards recipients—Rhoda Levitt, Shelly Berg and the Green Family Foundation Trust—will be feted April 11 during the Arsht's 20th Anniversary Gala. The event, which this year carries the theme Paint the Arsht Red, will feature an open-to-the-public performance by Grammy Award-winning jazz singer Gregory Porter. The gala and concert will take place at the Ziff Ballet Opera House.

In separate interviews with Arsht Magazine, Levitt, Berg and Dr. Kimberly Green of the Green Family Foundation discussed their careers in the arts, their affiliations with the Arsht and their encounters with Russian arts ambassadors, godfather of punk Iggy Pop and glam-rock legends KISS. 

"I have been extremely involved in arts and culture in the local community, the state and internationally for my whole life," says Rhoda Levitt, offering what can almost be read as that rarest of Miami occurrences: an understatement.

Born in the late 1930s, Levitt moved with her family from Brooklyn to Miami Beach when she was 10 years old. Already a fan of ballet and Broadway musicals, Levitt found herself living on an island that offered little in the way of professional entertainment. She returned as often as her parents would allow to New York, where an uncle took her to shows in Manhattan. At home in Dade County, however, Levitt says arts and culture amounted to taking a bus to the Olympia Theater.

"We saw a movie and a stage show," Levitt recalls. "That was that." Nationally recognized singers and comedians performed at the hotels on Collins Avenue, but "you weren't talking about Art Basel," she says.

Levitt, who graduated from Miami Beach Senior High School in 1953, realized that if she wanted to experience performing arts in Miami, she had to join with people who hungered for it as she did and make something happen. She's been doing so ever since.

Levitt's many contributions to the arts in Miami and beyond include helping to create Miami City Ballet and heading the company's board; serving as an officer of the Adrienne Arsht Center Foundation; leading the Florida Council on Arts and Culture as vice chair (1997-98) and chair (1998-99); and sitting on the board of the multistate Southern Arts Foundation. In the late '90s, Levitt even established an international cultural exchange with a pair of Russian arts emissaries at a diner in Sunny Isles Beach. "I went home and told my husband, 'We're going to Moscow!' He said, 'What?' " 

Levitt has produced and sponsored seemingly countless programs and performances across Miami-Dade County. "I am as involved today as a woman of a certain age as I have ever been," she says. Earlier this year at GableStage in Coral Gables, Levitt presented a run of Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Nilo Cruz's drama Sotto Voce.

"I get a lot of satisfaction from helping other people achieve their goals," Levitt says. "And I also get pleasure. I have to use that word, because I always was insistent on telling people that they didn't have to always say 'arts and culture.' They could say 'entertainment.' Because 'entertainment' means more to a lot more people than 'arts and culture,' which tends to make people think of elitism, and I never wanted arts and culture to be elite. I wanted it to be for everybody."

Levitt is such an advocate for Miami that she still bristles at a "terrible" Time magazine cover that in 1981 asked, "South Florida: Paradise Lost?" Levitt has little use for doubters, particularly when motivation is just a phone or Zoom call away.

"I have this prejudiced thought that people in the arts easily love each other more than in many other kinds of organizations," she says. "It's just an acceptance that we have of other people's talents. That's what drives me. I love working with people. I like to be surrounded by people that make me happy, and then I make them happy. And I think that in arts and culture, besides what you get from a stage or a screen or a painting, you get interactions with people that are very special."

On May 31, Shelly Berg will retire from his position as dean of the Frost School of Music at the University of Miami after 19 years in Coral Gables and nearly a half century in higher education. He plans to spend more time in Southern California, where he has resided between semesters, and enjoy a year on what he describes as a "sabbatical."

The Grammy Award-nominated pianist, composer and arranger is not, however, expecting to make less music than before. Quite the opposite, in fact.

"You know, 47 years is a really good run, and I've gotten to work with generations of students and faculty and see so many careers launched and thrive," Berg says. "And all of that time, my own music career has been certainly interesting and rewarding, but it's been sort of unintentional. It's been the other thing that happened when the phone rang. And I know it will be really fun now to have my primary vocation be my own music."

Berg's discography is rich with solo and group albums, as well as appearances on recordings by some of the most notable names in jazz (Arturo Sandoval), pop (Seal) and opera (Renee Fleming). He contributed orchestral arrangements to and played piano on singer-songwriter Elliott Smith's beloved 1998 album XO ("he had a very clear vision about what he was doing and what he wanted. I really liked him"); created orchestrations for Joe Cocker's 2004 covers album Heart & Soul ("I loved working on that record"); and added piano and arrangements to KISS' 1998 album Psycho Circus ("Gene Simmons understood that he was a commodity, a showman").

Berg earned his most recent Grammy nomination for the original composition "At Last," which appears on the 2024 album Alegría, recorded with bassist Carlitos Del Puerto and drummer Dafnis Prieto. Berg says he has begun ruminating on a new album and booking shows, but "the immediate plan is to just give myself a couple months to think."

One thing that won't change for Berg following his retirement is his involvement with Jazz Roots, the annual Arsht concert series and educational program for which he has served as artistic advisor since 2016. Berg says he will continue in the role and is currently programming the series' 2026-27 season with the Arsht.

Berg succeeded Larry Rosen, a record producer and entrepreneur who created the series with the Arsht and was its first artistic advisor. "One of the great happenstances upon moving to Miami was finding that Larry and Hazel Rosen were also in Miami," Berg says. "Everybody in the jazz business knew Larry Rosen because he was an icon. [We] became very close. And along with a few others, we brainstormed the idea—Larry's idea—that there could be a successful jazz series in a large concert hall in Miami. And so I was there from the very first meeting. I'm the one who came up with the name 'Jazz Roots.' "

It's an apt title, as the series has featured concerts by jazz greats such as Chick Corea, Arturo Sandoval and Sonny Rollins and roots-music icons such as Mavis Staples, Dr. John and B.B. King. Berg took over as advisor following Rosen's death in 2015.

Today, a Jazz Roots season typically opens with an all-star concert themed around a concept (e.g., Latin artists performing British Invasion songs) or a single artist (Sarah Vaughan, Miles Davis). Those "curated" shows often feature the Henry Mancini Institute Orchestra, which consists of students from the Frost School of Music. Each show is preceded by a Jazz Roots Sound Check workshop at which public high school students meet and sometimes jam with the headliners. About 1,000 students participate in the program every season.

"I love [Jazz Roots]. I love that it's something that Larry was right about," Berg says. "Larry had been right before. He was right that the CD was going to be the next thing when it was. And he was right that if you programmed for your audience, you could be successful in a large concert hall doing jazz. And so, in deference to Larry's legacy, it's important for me to stay involved, because I want to see through and empower what his vision was."

Berg was born in Cleveland and as a teenager moved to Houston, where he attended college and began his career in academia. At the University of Miami, he pioneered the "Experiential Music Curriculum," which became known as "The Frost Method."

"The idea of the Experiential Music Curriculum is that you don't learn how to do things in a lecture," Berg explains. "You learn about things in a lecture, but you learn how to do things by doing them. ... At Frost, we came up with a way for students to be in what I would call little classical garage bands and really work every day on these things as transferable skills. It changes the way you play music."

It also has transformed how music is taught far beyond Miami, as The Frost Method has been adopted by colleges and universities across the country. "There are many schools that have sent their faculty down to observe what we do or ask for some of our leaders to come and consult with them," Berg says. "There are schools that if you go onto their websites now, you see them using language that we started using first, 15 years ago. It has had a big effect in higher education."

The Green Family Foundation Trust was six years into its mission to fight poverty, develop communities and fund global-health initiatives when Dr. Kimberly Green, a daughter of founders Steven J. Green and Dorothea Green, became the Miami-based organization's president in 1997. A fan of independent film and music, Green wanted the GFF, as the foundation is also known, to support Miami's underground but rising cultural scene.

"I was very much invested in grassroots, community-based arts programs," she recalls.

Meanwhile, as Les Standiford writes in his book Center of Dreams,  a "pluralistic phase in fund-raising" was taking place in Miami as the trust foundation for Miami-Dade County's planned downtown performing arts center attempted to "rouse significant response among affluent residents."

Green had questions. "We were not initially involved in the fundraising and development of what is now called the Arsht," she recalls. "I was listening to the concerns of the smaller [arts] organizations and how everyone was afraid that they were going to lose their funding or their funding would dwindle because people would be putting [their money] into a larger performing arts center."

Following the October 2006 opening of what was then called the Carnival Center, and when it became apparent that community engagement and educational programming were central to the venue's mission, Green and her family were relieved. "This was the area that I was very much interested in," she says, "the AileyCamp, the Gospel Sundays, the events that are more geared towards our community."

Today, Green is a member of the Adrienne Arsht Center Foundation's board of directors. The 2,400-seat main theater inside the Ziff Ballet Opera House is named for her mother. The Green Family Foundation's support of the Arsht includes a $2.5 million arts-education grant awarded in 2019 and the creation in 2024 of the Dorothea Green Chair of Education and Community Engagement, a $2.5 million endowment that funds Arsht programs such as I am Me, Jazz Roots Sound Check and Arsht on the Road. “The Green Family Foundation has championed life-affirming, life-changing arts experiences for countless individuals,” Arsht CEO and president Johann Zietsman said during a dedication ceremony for the Dorothea Green Chair, the first gift of its kind awarded to a performing arts center.

Green recalls being "overwhelmed with joy" during her presentation of the endowment to Arsht executive producer Jairo Ontiveros, who oversees arts education and community programming. She also experienced a rush of hometown pride.

"People always think that Miami is jumping on a bandwagon and that we're not as good as New York or we're not as good as Chicago," Green says. "We're as good as Miami is, you know? We are who our citizens are, and we have amazing people here. The fact that [the endowed chair] was [awarded to] someone that was not being brought in from another city really meant a lot to me. Because this was highlighting and showcasing our Miami talent."

Six years ago, the GFF opened Green Space Miami, a downtown art center that exhibits work by local artists and hosts workshops, performances, literary events, town halls and other community gatherings. The gallery's current group exhibition, New Atlantis, draws its title and inspiration from a song by garage-rock legend and Miami resident Iggy Pop, who, through a mutual friend, gave Green his permission to use it.

With her foundation duties, the art space and her expansive network of artists and cultural enthusiasts, Green says she "very rarely" takes a day off.

"I don't feel that it is a responsibility," she says of attending events that feature artists supported by the Green Family Foundation. "I feel an emotional attachment to so many of the partners that we have that I want to show up, and I believe that showing up is half of the work. Showing that support and being there for people is really important. It's not, for me, about just the treasure, but it's also the time."

The Adrienne Arsht Center's 20th Anniversary Gala: Paint the Arsht Red will take place Saturday, April 11. More information is available here. 

Jazz vocalist Gregory Porter will perform a special Arsht Gala concert at 7 p.m. April 11. Tickets cost $23.40 to $140.40 and are available here.

Top: Shelly Berg and Veronica Swift performed November 7, 2025 at Kind of Blue: Celebrating the Music of Miles Davis. Photo courtesy Daniel Azoulay.