Draft:Lenore K. French

Lenore K. French (born March 14, 1953) is an American arts advocate, activist, television producer, and educator.  A former New York University professor and Paramount Television executive, since 2013 she has served as President and Founder of Transformation Arts. From 2015-2020, she organized the Mar Vista Art Walk, a popular quarterly arts festival in Los Angeles.  The Mar Vista Art Walk was permanently retired in September 2022.  The organization has been renamed Transformation Arts in support of an expanded social justice mission with a focus on community-based public art. 

Early Life

Lenore was born on March 14, 1953 in Columbus, OH to Dr. Joseph Henry French, a pioneering pediatric neurologist, and Marilyn Doss French, an editor and patron of the arts.,

Due to her father’s career in pediatrics and neurology, the family moved multiple times throughout Lenore’s early life, from Columbus (OH) to Philadelphia to Baltimore to Denver, finally landing in suburban Westport, Connecticut two years before the passage of the Fair Housing Act of 1968, where she would be one of only two black students in her high school graduating class of eight hundred at Staples High School, an experience that would deeply affect her worldview.

From her father, the first African American to complete the Johns Hopkins Pediatric Neurology training program, she gained the discipline to view the social and political world through the lens of science. 

From her mother, an editor at Greenwood Press and a PhD candidate at NYU’s Graduate Program in Museum Administration, Lenore would develop her interest in the arts.

Activism and College Education

From both of her parents, Lenore would gain a commitment to anti-racist community engagement.  

In March of 1965, her father joined his brother, David Marshall French. the first Black chairperson of the medical arm of the Civil Rights Movement, the Medical Committee for Human Rights, providing medical assistance at the historic 1965 March on Selma, Alabama.

Throughout her life, Marilyn Doss French was a supporter and patron of education and the arts and was actively engaged in civil rights and community building. In 1969, her mother, a member of the International Women’s League for Peace and Freedom, took Lenore to the 1969 March on Washington against the War in Vietnam.

Lenore synthesized these early influences while an undergraduate at Harvard University. Radicalized during campus efforts to support African liberation movements, she participated in the 1972 takeover of the president’s office in the Harvard Administration Building by the Pan African Liberation Committee (PALC) and members of Harvard-Radcliffe Association of African and Afro-American Students (Afro). In the winter of her junior year Lenore met black feminist activist Frances M. Beal, and left Harvard to join the Third World Women’s Alliance (TWWA) Beal co-founded in 1970.  An early radical socialist organization for women of color, Lenore was profoundly affected by Beal’s “Black Women’s Manifesto” as well as the organization’s trailblazing intersectional approach. The TWWA mission underscored the “triple jeopardy” of capitalism, racism and sexism as the source of oppression for women of color specifically.  Members of TWWA collectively wrote and published the Triple Jeopardy newspaper from 1971-1975; including reviews of radical art and movies written by her. This understanding of the intersection of race/class/sex continues to inform Lenore’s activism.  Other early influences included the activism of her cousin, Lynn C. French, whose involvemen with the Chicago chapter of the Black Panther Party under Fred Hampton, she admired.

Lenore is one of twenty-five women profiled in We Were There: The Third World Women’s Alliance and the Second Wave (Feminist Press), about the organization.

Career: Film & Television

In 1974, after graduating from Harvard, Lenore was hired as an Intern in the WNBC-TV' Minority Training Program in New York where she worked on their 1976 American bicentennial promotion campaign.

Lenore attended New York University's (NYU) Graduate Film program in 1977, where director/writer Jim Jarmusch was her classmate.

In 1979, she took leave from NYU to work on a documentary short about the music of the West African kora and its relationship to the American banjo, narrated by Grammy award-winning American musician Taj Mahal as part of a planned graduate capstone project in musicology.  While there, a chance meeting with Roots writer/author Alex Haley in Banjul, Gambia led to her first job in Hollywood. The project was a co-production between Haley and writer/producer Norman Lear on the series, “Palmerstown, U.S.A” for CBS.

In 1980, Lenore continued to work with Alex Haley at his Kunta Kinte-Alex Haley Foundation in research and development of projects in development for producer David L. Wolper at Warner Brothers. That same year, she continued work as a story analyst for Samuel Goldwyn, The Ladd Company, and CBS Television.

From 1980 - 1984, Lenore served as a senior television programming executive for Paramount Television Studios, working on the classic television series "Cheers", "Family Ties", "Taxi", "Happy Days", "Mork & Mindy", and "Laverne & Shirley", in addition to the miniseries "Winds of War" .

From 1987-1991, Lenore returned to NYU as a film instructor in the Film and Television Department developing and teaching courses focused on Screenwriting, Comedy Writing for Television, and The History of Comedy in Film.

At this time she also opened the doors to her own company, “Seminars in Cinema” which provided film consultation and screenwriting services.

In 1986 she partnered with writer Bonnie Allen to create and write pilots for the CBS primetime television series "Surelock:-Barnett" and "Class Act".

In 2000, she was a finalist in Steven Spielberg Chesterfield Screenwriting Competition for her original screenplay, “Ekamba”, set against the backdrop of the wars for independence from Portugese colonialism in Angola and Mozambique.

In 2006, she founded Mataram Productions and produced the series, “The Greenhouse FX,” “Comedy Kitchen” and “Himalaya Heaven: The Joy of Service,” a documentary short filmed in the Indian Himalayas [which was selected for the New York Mini Film Festival and FIKE Evora/Portugal Film Festival.

2013 - 2022 and Art Activism

In 2013 Lenore founded Green Communications Initiative (GCI), a nonprofit public benefit corporation with an environmental justice mission to inspire responsible consumption. The organization was rebranded in 2023 to Transformation Arts with an expanded social-justice mission.

In 2014, their first gallery exhibition, “American Trash”, was held at Santa Monica’s Bergamot Station.  The exhibition was organized with environmental artivist Marina DeBris and  supporters including Heal the Bay, Ed Begley Jr., and environmentalist Dianna Cohen, partner of rock musician Jackson Browne.

In 2015, with the twin goals of providing more opportunities for artists and making the arts more accessible to the general public, she and local artist Mitchelito Orquiola co-founded the Mar Vista Art Walk, a free community art festival event that brought together local artists, galleries, small businesses, and neighborhood residents to convene around art, community, and music and to encourage urban walkability.,  During the pandemic, the ArtWalk took to social media for live streams and interviews with artists.

In 2021, Lenore led the Downtown Mar Vista Beautification Project (“DTMVBP”), a partnership between Los Angeles Council District-11, the Office of Mike Bonin, the Los Angeles Neighborhood Initiative (“LANI”) and GCI to implement art and beautification improvements on a one-mile stretch of downtown Mar Vista on Venice Blvd. This initiative went on to win the “Hard Won Victories” Award from the American Planning Association in 2022 and brought five new mural projects to the neighborhood.

Other past civic art initiatives included the installation of art onto public utility boxes and solar-powered bus shelters, as well as the first Los Angeles temporary pavement mural.

Transformation Arts

In 2023, GCI was renamed as a reflection of an expanded social justice mission in the wake of the pandemic and the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd.

In 2024, the rebranded arts nonprofit, Transformation Arts, is managing a LA County civic art installation at the county library in Florence-Graham, as well as a beautification project in the Los Angeles Harbor community of Wilmington, including six new mosaic tile murals with mixed media video components and six new wall murals. The Wilmington project is a partnership with Los Angeles City Council District-15 and LANI-Los Angeles Neighborhood Initiative.

Lenore is also co-founder of the Venice-Mar Vista Arts Coalition, a coalition of 30 West Los Angeles arts nonprofits and artists, as well as a member of the Executive Board of Trustees for the literary arts non-profit, Beyond Baroque.

Personal Life

In 1996, Lenore adopted her son, Derek Charles Robert French, as a single parent.  Derek C. French is a New York City fine art photographer and photojournalist.