Ted Cutler, who died Thursday at the age of 86, was a tectonic force in shaping Boston’s performing arts landscape. From providing the lead gift to renovate what is now known as the Cutler Majestic Theatre to generous support of Boston Ballet and Boston Lyric Opera, his philanthropy and personal involvement in the arts organizations he championed was legendary.

“Teddy had two attributes of a great leader: He had a good heart and a moral core,’’ said Emerson College president Lee Pelton. “If you think about his support for the arts, it was not to maintain the status quo, but to move the city forward in a profound way.’’

Cutler maintained an abiding passion for Boston’s artistic life. With his late wife, Joan, he spread millions of dollars among many organizations, holding board positions over the years at Emerson College, Boston Ballet, and the recently renamed Boch Center, to name a few.

In recent years Cutler poured his passion into Outside the Box, a multiday performing arts festival on Boston Common that he funded largely on his own, insisting that it remain free to the public.

“A lot of people from the city of Boston, that was their first concert,’’ Cutler, who grew up poor in Dorchester, told the Globe in 2015. “Philanthropy is when you see something that’s missing, and you’re able to fill the void. I was able to fill it in my manner, and my manner was through the performing arts.’’

One of the largest beneficiaries of Cutler’s largesse was his alma mater, Emerson College. As a member of its board of trustees, Cutler was instrumental in the college’s move from the Back Bay to its current downtown home.

In 1997 he led the campaign to fund new facilities for Emerson’s radio station, WERS, working with Jacqueline Liebergott, the college’s president then, to ensure the station had street-level visibility.

Two years later came Emerson’s renovation of the Cutler Majestic, a Beaux Arts theater that had fallen into severe disrepair.

“His gift to the Majestic came just at a time when no one could have imagined what this part of the city would become,’’ said Pelton. “The Majestic was a stone’s throw away from the Combat Zone. Through his gifts, he’s been able to singlehandedly change the downtown corridor.’’

Cutler chaired Emerson’s board of trustees from 2001 to 2007 and supported ArtsEmerson, a theatrical presenting arm of the college, which was founded in 2010.

“I think of Teddy as Boston’s ultimate culture vulture,’’ said Robert Orchard, whom Cutler hand-picked as ArtsEmerson’s founding director. “He networks like no one I know. . . . It wasn’t talk, it was action.’’

Cutler also gave to a slew of other organizations, both personally and through the Theodore H. Cutler Family Charitable Trust, including the Huntington Theatre Company, American Repertory Theater, Museum of Fine Arts, and Berklee College of Music.

Boch Center president Josiah Spaulding Jr. called Cutler “a friend, donor, and mentor.’’

“He’s been a stalwart and a leader who put his money where his mouth was,’’ said Spaulding, who estimated Cutler had donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to the organization over the years. “His tenacity in wanting to make all of the arts thrive was something to behold.’’

Through his charitable trust, Cutler gave more than $1 million to Boston Ballet. He gave Boston Lyric Opera roughly $450,000 over the past two decades.

“He liked to support events that were geared toward educational activities,’’ said BLO general and artistic director Esther Nelson. “He was very interested in making arts accessible and part of young people’s lives.’’

In 2013, Cutler launched Outside the Box, a performing arts extravaganza. Although hundreds of thousands of visitors have flocked to the event, it struggled to attract sponsors in its first year, which Cutler self-financed to the tune of $6 million. Known to hand-pick artists and zip around the festival in a golf cart, Cutler spent millions on the project in subsequent years.

“He took a very personal stake in Outside the Box; he wanted to make sure it was for everyone,’’ said Susan Shields Darian, executive director of the Boston Arts Summer Institute, Cutler’s nonprofit that produces the festival. Darian added that the festival’s future was now unclear.

“We’re taking a couple days to regroup,’’ she said. “We’re batting around a couple of ideas that would be able to honor Ted’s vision.’’

A driving force behind Outside the Box was to give underprivileged children exposure to the performing arts, Darian noted.

“Nothing meant more to him than to have parents with kids and to say, ‘Thank you, this is the first concert I’ve been able to take my kids to.’ ’’

Malcolm Gay can be reached at malcolm.gay@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter at @malcolmgay.