Foundation Gives $2.5 Million to Artists’ Colonies

Artists’ colonies around the nation, including three in Northern California, are the latest recipients of the largess of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. In an unusual initiative announced Thursday, the Chicago-based foundation awarded a total of more than $2.5 million to 18 artists’ retreats and residences in 10 states.

In a statement, MacArthur Foundation president Adele Simmons said, “Although these grants are not being made in direct response to the recent controversy surrounding arts funding, we feel that our support of these artists’ communities comes at a time when it is important to reaffirm the essential freedom that is necessary for all creative accomplishment.”

The one-time grants range from $50,000 to $200,000. Recipients include such well-known organizations as Capp Street Project in San Francisco and the MacDowell Colony in Peterborough, N.H., as well as lower-profile facilities such as the Atlantic Center for the Arts in New Smyrna Beach, Fla., and Sculpture Space in Utica, N.Y.

All three California colonies, which received $150,000 apiece, are in the Bay Area. In addition to the Capp Street grant, awards were made to the Djerassi Foundation, Woodside, and the Headlands Center for the Arts, Sausalito.

Like the celebrated MacArthur Fellowships, which provide no-strings-attached grants to artists so they might follow their individual muses, artists’ colonies and retreats typically are established to provide living and studio spaces in which selected artists can pursue their work unimpeded. The new grants are designed to provide those residences with resources for capital improvements and expanded programs.

In 1989, the MacArthur Foundation completed a study of the program needs of artists’ colonies. Based on the results, proposals were requested from traditional rural-retreats, from urban studio spaces, and from collaborative venues for the performing arts.