Jane Lang · 2024 Honoree

Jane Lang has had two distinct careers, the first as a successful lawyer, the second as a generous and imaginative philanthropist with a special interest in the arts. She was the first female partner at the prestigious Steptoe & Johnson law firm, a hard-charging litigator arguing, among other things on behalf of victims of workplace discrimination, and from 1979 to 1981, General Counsel to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. In 1989 she and her late husband Paul Sprenger created the Sprenger & Lang law firm. While doing that she served as Trustee – and later Chair – of the Eugene M. Lang Foundation created by her father in 1963, which offers significant grants in support of education, the arts and civic engagement. And it is thanks to her efforts that a long-abandoned movie house on H Street NE has been transformed into the Atlas Performing Arts Center, a popular venue for theater, dance, music and a variety of programs for children. 

The Atlas project called for every ounce of determination Jane possessed. She had to endure the skepticism of those who cautioned her that DC is a “nightmare,” the complexities of zoning and other negotiations with the city government, and the challenge of raising an enormous amount of money. But she hung onto her vision of a “creative space for artists and audiences to explore the ideas and issues of our time.” In 2006 the Atlas Performing Arts Center opened with the 258-seat Lang Theatre, 3 smaller performance spaces, rehearsal halls and the Kogod Lobby and Cafritz Promenade, all available for rent. Shortly after Mosaic Theater Company's 2014 founding, it became the Atlas’s resident theater company, sharing performance spaces with the Capital City Symphony, Joy of Motion Dance Center, StepAfrika, and a wide range of performing arts groups and programs. The Atlas created and anchors the annual INTERSECTIONS arts festival.

When she first visited the Atlas in 2000, Jane had never before been to Northeast DC. But after the unexpected death of her husband in 2014, she moved from Cleveland Park to Capitol Hill, finding comfort in the proximity of the Atlas and enjoying the conviviality of walking everywhere with her toy poodle Pippin. 

Jane is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Swarthmore College and the University of Pennsylvania Law School. She and her partner Bob Kapp have between them 9 children and stepchildren and 24 grandchildren.