A recurring theme we’ve been observing in the past year-plus is the extent to which the pandemic has triggered introspection and innovation across the arts funding community. Grantmakers have streamlined or eliminated onerous applications, contributed to collaborative funds, and pivoted to unrestricted support. While most grantmakers haven’t gone so far as to give up their decision-making power, New York-based Art Matters gave it a shot.
After soliciting feedback from alumni of its fellowship program, the board decided to hand over grantmaking power to a subset of artists they’ve funded in the past. In mid-October, Art Matters announced the winners of this pilot regranting program, dubbed Artist2Artist. Thirteen alumni of the foundation’s fellowship program received a new grant—and were tasked with awarding grants to one or more of their peer artists. All told, 36 artists netted a total of $195,000. Notably, there was no elaborate panel process and the board retained only minimal veto power on decisions.
“Artist2Artist is a way of aligning ourselves with those already doing the valuable work to dismantle the philanthropic systems that do not truly empower artists,” said Director Abbey Williams in Art Matters’ press release. “We want to help tear down what isn’t working and center artists’ sovereignty to clear the way for them to build something new.”
That means allowing non-foundation staff to make funding decisions, but also moving away from a model of giving that supports only “outcome-focused” activities, something the Art Matters has been doing since 2017. Artists, Williams told me, need a break from the project- and performance-based grant treadmill. Her perspective—reflective of a growing interest in participatory grantmaking—might make some philanthropic leaders feel uneasy. After all, if the status quo isn’t working and the best way to meet the needs of artists is to relinquish grantmaking to artists themselves, foundation staff may innovate themselves out of existence.
But the first round of Artist2Artist suggests these concerns are mostly overstated. Williams is still on the job, although her role has shifted to more of a facilitator rather than a check writer. “Before Artist2Artist, our work was on the front end, helping people with applications and reaching out to outside nominators,” she told me. “Now, we put that work on the opposite end, which is building a community of support, which to me feels like a much more robust way to work.”
A (mostly) single-donor funder
Philanthropist Laura Donnelley created Art Matters with the mission to “support experimentation in art, both in media and ideas.” It was incorporated in 1985 as a nonprofit private foundation. For the next decade, Art Matters provided grants for individual artists and, to a lesser extent, support for organizations that created new work, while also advocating for public funding for the arts.
Donnelley is also the chair of the Gaylord and Dorothy Donnelley Foundation, which supports arts organizations in the Chicago region and the Lowcountry of South Carolina. (She is the daughter of the foundation’s namesake couple.) In addition, Donnelly founded the Good Works Foundation, which supports arts, education, and climate resiliency primarily in Southern California, and chairs the board of the Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.
Since its inception, practically all of Art Matters’ funding came from Donnelley. That changed in 2019 when the New York City-based artist-endowed foundation, the Betty Parsons Foundation, began providing $15,000 to underwrite a grant for two women artists annually. Last year, Art Matters awarded a total of $225,000. “We gave away more money than usual because we didn’t spend money on travel or other kinds of programming,” Williams said.
Prior to joining Art Matters, Williams exhibited her work in galleries all over the world, taught at the college level, and worked as program manager for Socrates Sculpture Park in Queens, New York, and creative director of the Rusty Fields project at the Weeksville Heritage Center in Brooklyn.
Back in 2004, she befriended longtime Art Matters board member Linda Earle. The two kept in touch, with Earle assuming the role of mentor for Williams. Fast-forward to 2016: Art Matters was looking for a program associate and Earle recommended Williams for the job. The rest, as they say, is history.
“I feel really lucky that I landed that position,” Williams told me, “because Art Matters is so considerate of an artist, in terms of labor and schedule. They’ve always made time for my work.” She became director in 2018.
Catalysts for change
Williams cited two pandemic-related catalysts that led to the creation of the Artist2Artist Fellows. The first was Art Matters’ support for eight artist-led mutual aid projects.
COVID-19 freed up Art Matters to “rethink how we give,” Williams said, and its support for mutual aid projects flowed from the idea that “artists really know where the money needs to go in their communities.” One artist, Guadalupe Maravilla, received a relief grant in 2020 for a project supporting undocumented immigrants and providing food and resources to immigrant families in partnership with the Good Shepherd Lutheran Church in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn.
Williams told me that Art Matters’ board members were struck by how artists supported their communities during that harrowing time. The idea of empowering previous grantees to award grants to their peers seemed like the logical extension of this work.
Leaders also convened two virtual alumni meet-ups in March 2021. Participants talked about how the crisis had affected their practice and personal lives, and expressed the need for “more support for non-productivity, combating isolationism, coalition-building, and accessibility,” according to Art Matters’ press release.
Williams defined “non-productivity” as activities that “aren’t outcome-focused.” In other words, artists were exhausted from hustling for support that was contingent on a project or a performance. It should be noted that artists weren’t exhausted from hustling for Art Matters’ support, as the grantmaker eliminated project-based funding and pivoted to fellowships in 2017. Rather, participants’ grievances spoke to the field’s well-documented frustration with grantmakers’ reluctance to provide consistent and robust unrestricted support.
Alumni feedback, coupled with the success of artist-led mutual aid projects, convinced Williams and her team that an artist-to-artist grantmaking program would effectively advance the organization’s mission.
How Artist2Artist works
Having decided to implement an artist-to-artist fellowship, leaders developed a model that allocated $15,000 to each fellow—$7,500 for themselves and $7,500 to give away. Fellows could give the entire amount to a single artist or distribute it among multiple artists.
Having absorbed the lessons of the pandemic, Art Matters’ board expanded the definition of an artist “by recognizing a broader category of culture workers, granting support to people organizing mutual aid, community engagement, and alternative support structures for artists,” the press release read.
Next, Williams and her team identified a group of potential fellows. “We looked at candidates through the lens of, ‘This person is always collaborating with other artists,’ or, ‘This person is always working with people outside their practice,’” she said. Candidates were also evaluated based on their engagement with five key artist-generated themes: justice and anti-oppressive practices, geographies, culture of care, individual interventions, and reimagining institutions. (Check out the press release for more information on each theme.)
Williams informed candidates they would receive a grant for the continuation of their work and asked if they would be willing to award grants. There would be no applications, no panel, and the board held no veto power beyond familial conflicts of interest. “It was zero labor for them, other than thought,” Williams said.
Thirteen alumni signed on. Some emailed Williams a few hours later saying, “I know who I want to give the grants to.” Others dipped into their own $7,500 award to boost the total payout. “We never suggested they take less than half for themselves,” Williams said. “Those who did this initiated it all on their own.”
Once alumni agreed to provide grants, Williams walked them through the kinds of considerations that program officers and grantmaking panels have to grapple with. “I was able to say, ‘You’ve got three people in mind, and if you divide the money between them, it’s important to think about the impact versus giving one or two people more money,’” Williams said. “I’m offering that insight, and they have all the decision-making power, which was pretty great.”
Williams’ articulation of her role aligns with what I’ve been hearing from other participatory grantmakers. Funders can be understandably reluctant to outsource the decision-making process to third parties. If an outside panel or an artist decides where the money goes, then what are foundation staff supposed to do all day? The answer is to pivot to facilitating conversations with grantmakers, organizations and other community members.
What about conflicts of interest?
Another potential sticking point with any democratized model is that it can present conflicts of interest concerns, as judges may have existing relationships with applicants.
Funders that outsource decision-making to panels have been grappling with the issue for some time. For example, 3Arts, the Chicago-based arts funder, requires judges to disclose conflicts of interest as part of the selection process. “If a strong personal or professional relationship exists between a judge and a nominated artist that might be an impediment to the integrity of the process, a full recusal from the discussion and vote is implemented,” its site reads.
3Arts has its own similar artist-led grantmaking program, called Make a Wave, in which each of the previous year’s 3Arts Award recipients select another artist to receive a surprise grant. This artist-to-artist model adds another level of complexity to the conflict of interest issue. While nominators are prohibited from awarding grants to family members, there is usually nothing stopping them from providing grants to their close friends. 3Arts has a conflict of interest policy in place for its Make a Wave grants, stipulating, among other things, that the grantor will not gain financially by providing support to an artist.
Williams and her team also thought long and hard about this dynamic. She laid out an analogy in which a fellow is currently collaborating on a project with another artist. If the fellow gave that artist a check for $3,000, he would essentially be writing a check to himself. Williams told me she had “very transparent conversations” with nominators about avoiding these kinds of arrangements. “I knew many of them were going to give to people they’ve worked with,” she said, “but I wanted them to be clear about how they were working with them.”
Not surprisingly, alumni awarded grants to artists they had worked with in the past. Grantors would say, “‘I collaborated with this artist five times and they’ve always performed for free, and this feels like a way I can repay them,’” Williams said. “That was one of the kinds of relationships that alumni were supporting.”
Casting a wider net
Another key takeaway from the Artist2Artist fellowship is the board’s acknowledgment that it missed out on opportunities to support promising artists under its previous model. This is a level of heightened awareness that a number of funders have reported since the pandemic struck and they branched out from their usual practices.
Last September, Maurine Knighton, director of the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation’s arts program, summed up funders’ collective pandemic-inspired epiphany. “Humility is the watchword,” she said. “We don’t know everything.” Art Matters’ Williams agrees. Its Artist2Artist Fellows awarded grants to artists that “I’m sure we’d never find. That’s what’s so exciting about the artist-grantors. They know who’s not getting enough recognition.”
Williams noted that prior to 2021, Art Matters “viewed the world through the lens of the United States, which doesn’t feel like the way artists think.” It was understandable that Art Matters would have this perspective as a U.S.-based funder, and just trying to keep tabs on all the amazing artists in New York alone is a herculean task.
As it turned out, many Artist2Artist fellows had relationships with grantees working abroad, enabling Art Matters to “accomplish something that we’ve been wanting to do for a while, which was to look beyond the U.S.,” Williams said.
Humanizing “the artist”
Will Art Matters go back to the days when outside nominators identified and selected grantees? The jury (pun sadly intended) is still out.
Williams told me that everybody—from Art Matters’ artist-heavy board down to the grantees themselves—is thrilled with the model. That said, she also understands that outside nominators bring valuable recommendations to the table. “We don’t want to close out other parts of the arts community,” she said.
No matter what happens, Williams underscored the need for funders to be responsive to the needs of artists. This sounds pretty intuitive, but she told me that it hasn’t always been the case.
Williams, an artist herself, recalls going to her first philanthropy conferences and being struck by how funding leaders would talk about artists in an abstract and rarefied way, as if they were “aliens from a strange planet.” So it’s no surprise that many of their programs didn’t naturally align with artists’ needs—look no further than the ongoing frustration of Art Matters alumni with “outcome-focused,” project-based grants.
If there’s any silver lining to be gleaned from the pandemic, it’s that it has compelled funders to build deeper and more intimate relationships with artists here on Earth. “Funders need to know that artists need materials and groceries,” Williams said. “Getting to know someone is the only way you can really understand what they need, right?”