Ford Foundation President Darren Walker Will Step Down at End of 2025

The Ford Foundation announced Monday that its president, Darren Walker, plans to step down from the organization by the end of next year.

Walker has been head of the organization for the past 11 years, building a vast influence on the arts and international philanthropy while significantly expanding funding programs for artists as well as arts programming. Walker has also received criticism on several occasions, including for supporting the postponement of an exhibition of artist Philip Guston‘s work in 2020 which included images of Klan figures.

“I am incredibly humbled and grateful to have had the opportunity and privilege to serve the Ford Foundation over these past 11 years,” Walker said in a press statement. “The work of the Ford Foundation is the work of generations, and I’m proud to have played a part in leading this storied institution. The efforts to address the societal drivers of inequality with grantees and partners would not have been possible without the tenacity of our incredible program and operations colleagues. I remain steadfast in my belief that the Ford Foundation is in the business of hope and in its future in pursuing a more just and equitable world.”

The New York Times, which first reported the news of Walker’s departure announcement, noted the grants distributed under his tenure will total $7 billion.

Under Walker’s leadership, the Ford Foundation shifted the way it launched and distributed grants, programs and organizational support, with a focus on inequality and social justice. These included the Disability Futures initiative in partnership with the Mellon Foundation, which provided $50,000 fellowships to artists like Finnegan Shannon, Johanna Hedva, and JJJJJerom Ellis to fund their practice.

Other notable initiatives the Ford Foundation led or partnered with other grant makers for during Walker’s leadership include the five-year, $11 million Leadership in Art Museums aimed at helping diversify 19 institutions; the partnership with the Museum of Modern Art for a year-long scholars-in-residence program; the $5 million Advancing Latinx Art in Museums initiative for early-career curatorial positions specializing in Latinx art; the $50,000 Latinx Artist Fellowships; the $50,000 Art of Change fellowships; as well as $3 million in funding to help preserve Black history sites.

During the onset of the Covid-19 global pandemic in 2020, Walker led two notable projects: a $1 billion social bond to bolster and strengthen nonprofit organizations and America’s Cultural Treasures, a $300 million fund from more than 40 foundations and major donors to help sustain 20 cultural institutions serving communities of color with grants of $1 million to $6 million.

The 10 museums included the the Arab American National Museum, El Museo del Barrio, the Japanese American National Museum, Museo de Arte de Puerto Rico, the Museum of Chinese in the Americas, the Museum of Contemporary Native Arts, the National Museum of Mexican Art, the Studio Museum in Harlem, and the Wing Luke Museum of the Asian Pacific American Experience. 

Walker was also criticized for supporting the four-year postponement of a Philip Guston retrospective that was originally expected to go on view at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, and Tate Modern in London in September 2020. The exhibition was going to include the Canadian-American artist’s famed paintings and drawings featuring hooded Ku Klux Klan figures, and Walker told the New York Times it would have been “tone deaf” to host the show. The Ford Foundation had contributed $1 million to the exhibition.

In addition to his leadership role at the Ford Foundation, Walker is also a trustee of the National Gallery of Art and vice president of the board at the Foundation for Art and Preservation in Embassies. He also created the President’s Council on Disability Inclusion in Philanthropy and the Arts Foundations Presidents Group, among others.

In addition to 16 honorary degrees and university awards, Walker was awarded France’s Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres, for leadership in the arts in 2022 and appointed to the Order of the British Empire by Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II in 2023.

Prior to Walker’s role as president of the Ford Foundation, he oversaw grants across the organization’s range of programs as vice president. Walker was also previously vice president of global and domestic programs at the Rockefeller Foundation and chief operating officer of the Abyssinian Development Corporation—Harlem’s largest community development organization—in the 1990s.

The Ford Foundation issued a press statement about the news of Walker’s planned departure on its website on July 22 on behalf of its board chair Francisco Cigarroa. The press statement said a search committee—composed of its trustees Cigarroa, Ursula Burns, Laurene Powell Jobs, Tom Kempner, Lourdes Lopez, Paula Moreno, and Ai-jen Poo—will assist the board with the search for Walker’s successor.

Walker told the Times that discussions about his departure with the Ford Foundation’s board had started two years ago.