Grantmakers in the Arts

On July 1, the Los Angeles County Department of Arts and Culture, formerly the Los Angeles County Arts Commission, marked the official transition and launch of the new department.

In 2001, activist Sadie Roberts-Joseph founded the Baton Rouge African American Museum "after Baton Rouge refused to make black history a mandatory part of schools' curriculum," as CNN reported. Last month, Roberts-Joseph was killed, and in August, a month following her tragic murder, the museum has been vandalized, part of larger anti-justice movements in a polarized country.

This month, as the second anniversary of Hurricane Harvey approaches, the Houston arts community has united to create a website that hopes artists in the area will be better informed and prepared the next time a large hurricane arrives, Nonprofit Quarterly reported.

The Baltimore Museum of Art (BMA) recently announced "2020 Vision," a year of exhibitions and programs dedicated to female-identifying artists. The show also marks the 100th anniversary of women’s suffrage, and according to the announcement, the initiative will encompass 13 solo exhibitions and seven thematic shows beginning in fall 2019, with additional presentations still being planned.

Last year, six of the Walter & Elise Haas Fund’s arts grantees merged or were acquired, as Frances Phillips, program director of the Arts & the Creative Work Fund at the Walter & Elise Haas Fund, writes in a blog post. Phillips interviewed staff and board members at each of these organizations to learn what shaped their decisions and to ask what advice they have to offer others.

The organizers of an exhibition in Berlin inspired by the Afrofuturism movement and Elon Musk did not include a single black artist in its lineup, as an The Guardian reported, criticism followed. The Künstlerhaus Bethanien space, where the exhibition takes place has fallen into “old curatorial habits that favor white men," according to the activist group Soup du Jour, wrote The Guardian.

A consortium of four foundations — the Andrew W. Mellon, Ford, and MacArthur foundations and the J. Paul Getty Trust — recently announced the acquisition of a historic African-American photographic archive, pending court approval and the closing of the sale.

While some grantmakers "have moved toward the participatory model by bringing advisory panels on board," the North Star Fund, which identifies as a social justice fund that supports grassroots organizing and communities building power in New York City and the Hudson Valley, has "turned over most of its grantmaking decisions to committees composed of activists and others from the neighborhood," as a piece by The Chronicle of Philanthropy states.