Ruth Foundation Gives $1.25 M. to 56 Arts Organizations Selected by Artists

The Ruth Foundation for the Arts has announced the 56 arts and cultural organizations that have been selected for its second annual Artist Choice initiative. Each organization will receive funds ranging from $20,000 to $50,000 for a total of $1.25 million.

Considered Ruth Arts’s flagship program, Artist Choice works by having a cohort of artists nominate up to three organizations that “have impacted their practice and instill a sense of creative community,” which the artists are free to interpret as they choose, according to a release. Two organizations, which the foundation is not naming, received $50,000 each as they received the most nominations in two regional categories: nationally and the Midwest.

This year’s cohort consisted of 53 artists, including Lorraine O’Grady, Tomashi Jackson, Jason Moran, Hock E Aye Vi Edgar Heap of Birds, Alex Da Corte, Raven Chacon, Carolina Caycedo, Martine Syms, Edra Soto, Maia Cruz Palileo, Pao Houa Her, Steffani Jemison, Teresa Baker, and others, as well as artists who chose to remain anonymous.

“Ruth Foundation for the Arts asking artists to nominate the people they see working is an incredible way to give a chance to smaller structures to grow larger, or, at least, sustain their size, which, in and of itself can be a momentous task,” Azikiwe Mohammed, one of the nominating artists, said in a statement. “Allowing that finding and thinking to live alongside the working is a way to think about the entire ecosystem at once, something that I have not seen enough.”

Several of the organizations, which come from 41 cities in 26 states, included have a smaller profile nationally, such as Antenna in New Orleans, the Chicago Artists Coalition, Deaf Spotlight in Seattle, Center for Hmong Arts & Talent in Saint Paul, the Ucross Foundation in Wyoming, the Marble House Project in Vermont, Tropic Editions in Honolulu, and La Impresora in Isabela, Puerto Rico. Other more well-known organizations selected include Franklin Furnace, NXTHVN, Project Eats, Cassandra Press, Wave Hill, Institute of American Indian Arts, and Denniston Hill.

“The organizations awarded truly reflect the multitude of ways an artist comes to be—these are the spaces where artists first became teachers, where they met their mentors, where they discovered what was possible in artmaking,” Ruth Arts program director Kim Nguyen said in a statement.

Ruth Arts was established last year with a $440 million endowment from the late arts patron Ruth DeYoung Kohler II and the goal of doling out around $17 million in grants annually. To date, it has administered $15.74 million through the first iteration of Artist Choice and its four other grantmaking programs.

“Artist Choice brings us full circle,” Karen Patterson, the foundation’s executive director, said in a statement, “and back to the root of our work which is to learn with and from artists and the communities that raised them.”

The full list of Artist Choice grantees follows below.

*An asterisk denotes recipients with fiscal sponsors.