Muffled thoughts on grants

In the years that I served in the advisory panels for the District of Columbia Commission on the Arts and Humanities, I confirmed an interesting paradox that exists in the world of grant-giving when it comes to individual artists.

Arts organizations are usually registered as non-profit status organizations, and they rely on philanthropy and grants in order to operate - some gather a few thousand dollars each year, other millions.

Meanwhile, individual artists usually have to rely on their paychecks from their non-arts related day jobs, or teach in order to get a reliable source of income, since they are mostly ineligible to get direct financial support from grant-giving organizations because they are not incorporated with the state, city or federal government as a not-for-profit organization.

Although there are notable exceptions, a quick scan of the Foundation Center database reveals that most visual arts focused foundations in the US restrict their arts funding to not-for-profits.

That immediately also reveals a paradoxical disparity in grant giving to the people who create art and the people who put it on walls.

Around the area, DCCAH, the Maryland State Arts Council, the Heinz Endowments and others do offer individual financial grants for artists, but they are some others are the exception, rather than the rule.

And certainly missing is the individual donor, who may hand out millions at once to a museum or arts organization, but seldom sets up an organization (such as Andy Warhol did with Creative Capital) to hand out financial support directly to artists.

Update: As if to underscore my point, I am told that Heinz Endowments no longer gives grants to indovidual artists.