Six Years and $125 Million Later, Art for Justice Takes a Final Bow
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Jared Owens, Ellapsium, 2022. Owens was awarded an Art for justice fellowship in 2022. Image courtesy Jared Owens.
After six years and $125 million allocated to more than 200 artists and advocacy and arts organizations, collector and philanthropist Agnes Gund’s Art for Justice Fund (A4J) will sunset on June 30. The fund’s strategy of combining activism and the arts leaves behind a solid list of grantee accomplishments, including the launch of a new nonprofit led by formerly incarcerated artists.
Art for Justice, which was originally funded by Gund’s sale of a Roy Lichtenstein painting and has been administered by the Ford Foundation and Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors, is also a prime example of what can happen when a funder is committed to moving a big chunk of money out the door in a limited amount of time for a specific cause — and the pros and cons of such an approach.
With a specific focus on three major criminal justice reform areas — bail reform, sentencing reform to address the disproportionate impact of the carceral system on people of color, and creating meaningful reentry opportunities for people weighed down by criminal convictions — the fund’s grantees have racked up some impressive wins.
Three states and two cities, for example, have reformed their cash bail systems thanks in part to grantees’ work. Florida’s 2018 Amendment 4 started the groundwork for restoring voting rights to 1.4 million formerly incarcerated U.S. citizens in that state, although it has been attacked by forces looking to suppress Democratic and independent voters since passing. Grantee artists have had exhibitions in major arts institutions and a barn in rural Pennsylvania, and one was had a residency in the office of Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner. The fund’s support contributed to a three-fold increase in collaboration between arts and advocacy, and its work both attracted an additional $25 million in donations and inspired other funders to give at the intersection of arts and criminal justice advocacy. An independent evaluation conducted by Engage R&D points to the Mellon Foundation’s Imagining Freedom program as one example of the movement’s continued growth
All of these accomplishments, which carry on a growing tradition of funders boosting the work of “artist activists,” also centered on individual artists and organizational leaders who have been impacted by the carceral system, with 34% of Art for Justice grantees being nonprofits led by impacted individuals.
The fund’s accomplishments reflect its three goals: changing public policy to reduce the number of people in the country’s prisons and jails, changing public narratives through the arts, and bringing artists and activists together, said Art for Justice Program Director Helena Huang. To protect the privacy of its grantees, some of whom are currently incarcerated, the fund doesn’t disclose the amount of its individual grants. But Huang said that the amounts moved to individual nonprofits or artists ranged from $25,000 to $10 million over a number of years, with the largest grants dedicated to advocacy organizations. A fund spokesperson said that the average grant is $406,000.
“Our role and responsibility was to be catalytic and to help create proof of concept,” Huang said. “And we believed that if we were successful in working with our partners to do so, then others would come and see fit to support the work. And that is happening.”
Impact and uncertainty
The catalyzing effect of Art for Justice’s work is probably best demonstrated by the rapid growth of the Center for Art and Advocacy, which was launched in 2022 by formerly incarcerated artist Jesse Krimes.
The center, which is housed in New York City, grew out of Krimes and Craig’s successful work founding and operating the Right of Return USA Fellowship, which provides $20,000 awards to formerly incarcerated individual artists. In addition to Art for Justice, the fellowship has received funding support from the Mellon and Walton Family foundations. It’s the A4J funding, though, that has allowed the new nonprofit to really take off. Krimes said the funding his nonprofit has received will allow the center to grow its staff from two people to nine, secure substantial gallery and office space in Brooklyn, and purchase a property in upstate Pennsylvania to serve as an artists’ residency space.
“The amount of money they gave us is allowing us to do a significant scaling up,” Krimes said in a moment of understatement.
Art for Justice, mindful of its short shelf life, has also helped hook the center up with other funding opportunities, including a benefit auction at Christie’s in November. “They have been very intentional about connecting us with other funders and foundations and creating a sustainable network that we will be able to kind of tap into and leverage for our own sustainability into the future,” Krimes said.
Huang said the partnership with the center demonstrates “how quickly careers, work, organizations and individual leaders can develop with the right amount of support.” Despite its best efforts and desires, though, A4J wasn’t able to expend the same amount of energy and funds helping all of its grantees build the ability to sustain themselves now that the fund’s money is running out. Huang acknowledged that her team is a little worried about some of the smaller organizations that Art for Justice supported, noting that Ford may continue to fund many but not all of them.
“Will every organization that we supported survive us departing? I think most will,” Huang said. “Will everyone? Perhaps not.”
Of course, time-limited funds are far from the only players in the philanthrosphere that leave grantees hanging; just ask anyone whose budget has taken a hit when one or more of their institutional funders decided to chase the next shiny new thing, or a long-running program finally winds down. IP’s Philip Rojc recently examined the costs and benefits of spending down vs. perpetuity, and many of his points were also raised by both Huang and Krimes in my discussions with them.
The real issue, of course, isn’t whether or not giving it all away or stretching it out is the better approach; it’s the lack of overall resources that nonprofits have as they struggle to address great societal needs with the small amount of money that’s made available to them. In the absence of reforms to ensure that more wealth makes it to nonprofits, discussions about specific funding tactics and priorities take on an urgency they otherwise might not.
For now, the best we can do is evaluate funders based on criteria that include their results, and by that metric, Art for Justice can take a well-deserved bow as it makes its exit.
