Janet Brown

At the end of this year, Janet Brown will step down as president and CEO of Grantmakers in the Arts. She has led GIA for nine years, and under her leadership, membership in the organization has grown 34 percent, and its budget has nearly doubled. GIA’s influence has grown enormously in the field, and the organization has greatly expanded its programs, introducing webinars, research workshops, and forums on a wide variety of issues, including arts education, capitalization, cross-sector collaborations, racial equity, and support for individual artists.

The city of Detroit holds a special place in my heart. I began my job as president and CEO of GIA the same year that my son began the master’s degree program at the Hilberry Theatre at Wayne State in Detroit. He was there for three years, and now I have been at GIA for nine. But for those first three years, every time I flew east, I would route myself through Detroit. As I was redefining my life, Detroit became a metaphor for me — a city with a long and proud past, a strong cultural identity, and complicated challenges that it was facing head-on.

There are many arguments for continued federal funding to the National Endowments for the Arts and the Humanities (NEA and NEH), the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), and the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) — all agencies that would be eliminated by President Trump’s 2018 budget.

The United States of America has been in transition its entire life. There have been moments when transition was rebellious and violent, and there have been moments when change was covert and nearly unconscious. And there have been times when we felt the American dream was possible for everyone, and times when we have felt it was possible for no one.

I am inspired by the article in this 2016 fall issue of the Reader by Minnesota arts funders who for several years have been on a quest to further racial equity in arts philanthropy in their communities. Grantmakers in the Arts began our work in racial equity in 2012, and like this group, we slowly built our vocabulary, our understanding, and our vision for action. Minnesotans are doing the same.

In 1980, when I was living in New York City, I had a conversation with a man who at one time was general manager of Lincoln Center. We debated, rather heatedly, his premise that the National Endowment for the Arts should give money only to states that produce “good” art — in other words, New York. (He wasn’t sure other states should get any funding at all.) He believed the federal government should give funds to South Dakota, my home state, for what it does well — grow corn and beef.

Grantmakers in the Arts is committed to promoting racial equity in arts philanthropy and increasing support for African, Latinx, Arab, Asian, and Native American (ALAANA) artists, arts organizations, and communities. Our statement of purpose for this work, published in March 2015, comes after five years of internal discussions, workshops, articles, and forums led by a small learning group consisting of social justice funders and those concerned with social justice.

Earlier in my career, I was privileged to work across sectors with passionate and gifted artists. In most instances, the connection with the non-arts organization (hospital, correction facility) was made by my organization. But the creation of the service to be delivered was designed and always implemented by these amazing artists. You might define them as “teaching artists,” as Eric Booth does in his article in this 2015 fall issue of the Reader.

The winter and spring of 2015 have brought an awareness that there are movements building across the country, supported and, often, created by arts funders. Three of these coalescing movements are addressed in this issue: building organizations for arts education advocacy and action; lifelong learning and the use of the arts in wellness and health; and the growing consciousness that meaningful racial equity work is needed to counteract decades of institutional and structural racism in America.

Grantmakers in the Arts released its Statement of Purpose for Racial Equity in Arts Philanthropy in March 2015. It did not spring from thin air. Members concerned with social justice have been active within GIA for nearly a decade. Over the past six years, members have shown an overwhelming interest in equity issues facing their communities. Racial equity was deliberately selected four years ago for a thought leader forum in order to go deeper into one area of social justice.