Gayle Halperin and Jim Nugent will be honored as next year’s 47th TACA Silver Cup Award recipients, TACA — The Arts Community Alliance — announced at a reception hosted at the home of Mary McDermott Cook and attended by board members, former Silver Cup honorees, and close colleagues and friends of the 2025 honorees.

Cook’s home, known for offering some of the best skyline views in Dallas, is affectionately called DumpTop—a nickname it earned during construction due to its previous use as an illegal dump site.

“We are excited to celebrate Gayle and Jim at next year’s TACA Silver Cup luncheon for their years of passionate, selfless dedication to our arts community,” Maura Sheffler, Donna Wilhelm Family president and executive director, said in a statement. “Our community is stronger and more dynamic because of their contributions.”

Co-chairs for next year’s Silver Cup Luncheon are Phil Clemmons, John Dayton, Tara Lewis, and Donna Wilhelm. The event will take place on May 7 at the Omni Dallas Hotel.

“Gayle Halperin, executive director of Bruce Wood Dance Dallas, has achieved an enlightened vision — to spotlight Dallas, Texas as an incubator-center for contemporary dance,” Donna Wilhelm, 2021 Silver Cup Luncheon honoree, said in a statement. “Her dance leadership infused with heart and soul, her dedicated civic engagement, and strong personal integrity will be celebrated in 2025 as a recipient of the 2025 TACA Silver Cup Award.”

Nugent is known for his arts advocacy.

“For more than four decades, Jim Nugent has been one of Dallas’s foremost arts advocates. He devotes countless nights and weekends to attending performances across a spectrum of arts organizations and dedicates his days to volunteering in support of the same,” co-chair John Dayton, 1996 Silver Cup recipient, said.

Dedicated to dance

Halperin, executive director of Bruce Wood Dance Dallas, has had an extensive career in dance as a performer, educator, advocate, and philanthropist. Halperin and Bruce Wood were business partners and launched the Bruce Wood Dance Project in 2010 with a group of investors in Dallas.

Halperin was born and raised in West Haven, Connecticut. From 1976 to 1984, she performed professionally with the Mel Wong Dance Company in New York and taught dance at Yale University and Southern Connecticut State University.

Halperin has been active in the nonprofit arts community over the past 25 years in various capacities and currently is on the Dallas Area Cultural Advocacy Coalition Steering Committee, emeritus board of directors of the Sammons Center for the Arts and TITAS/DANCE UNBOUND, and a member of The Charter 100 of Dallas.

She was a board member of the Dance Council of North Texas from 1996-2017, during which she and her colleague, Linda James, spearheaded the free, annual, multicultural Dance Planet Festival from 1997 to 2017. In 2001 she co-chaired the search committee for a new executive director of TITAS/DANCE UNBOUND and served on its board from 1999-2021.

Halperin has received numerous accolades, including the 2011 Distinguished Alumni Award from Texas Woman’s University, the 2021 Arts Leadership Award from the Dallas Historical Society, the 2023 Women Who STEAM Award in the arts from The Links, Incorporated (Dallas, TX Chapter), and the 2023 Obelisk Award for Visionary Nonprofit Arts Leadership from the Business Council for the Arts. In 2024, she will be honored as a Distinguished Woman for the “In Her Shoes” series by the Dallas Holocaust and Human Rights Museum.

In 2011, Gayle and James Halperin received the Tom Adams Award of Appreciation for Dedication to TITAS

The Halperin Foundation, which supports health, wellness, and arts and culture, has also been recognized. It received the 2014 Sammons Center for the Arts Benefactor of the Year Award and the 2021 AIDS Interfaith Network Crystal Hope Award.

Financial management support

Nugent, a respected figure in the Dallas arts and nonprofit communities, brings decades of financial expertise and leadership to the various organizations he serves, TACA said. Currently, he is the treasurer for Pegasus Media Project, the Video Festival of Dallas, For Oak Cliff, and Schreiber Expanded Neighborhood Patrol. Nugent’s long-standing service extends to his former role as Treasurer of TACA, an organization he continues to support as a member of the board of directors.

In addition to his role at TACA, Nugent is an active board member of Second Thought Theatre, a theater company in Dallas. Over the years, Nugent also has served on the boards of the Dallas Film Society, Undermain Theatre, and the USA Film Festival, where he held the prestigious position of Chairperson. His deep commitment to supporting the arts has not gone unnoticed, as he was appointed by Dallas City Council Member Gay Donnell Willis to the Dallas Office of Arts and Culture Commission.

Nugent, a retired CPA, spent most of his career at Thompson Coe. His financial expertise extends to pro bono work, as he continues to provide bookkeeping services for Pegasus Media Project, the Video Festival of Dallas, the Dallas Film Society, Schreiber Expanded Neighborhood Patrol, and other organizations.

Nugent has been married to Deborah Nugent, the CFO of Best Associates and Treasurer of Undermain Theatre, for 42 years.

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