Nimoys’ program to aid artists

The Nimoy Foundation -- recently established in Los Angeles by actor-director-photographer Leonard Nimoy and his wife, Susan Bay Nimoy, a trustee of the Museum of Contemporary Art -- has launched a national grant program to support the work of contemporary artists. Called the Nimoy Visual Artist Residencies, the program will provide funds for arts organizations to administer artist residencies at the institutions’ sites or in surrounding communities.

“We have been given a lot as a result of the arts,” Leonard Nimoy says. “We wanted to make an impact that would be meaningful, to help find out who the next generation of great artists could be.”

“Our secret wish,” Susan Nimoy says, “is that this will encourage other art supporters to create similar programs.”

In the first round of grants, to be announced this week, $425,000 will be awarded to 16 visual arts organizations in amounts from $10,000 to $50,000. Winners include the Orange County Museum of Art in Newport Beach ($50,000), the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston ($40,000), the UCLA Hammer Museum in Los Angeles ($30,000), the Contemporary Art Museum in St. Louis, the San Francisco Art Institute ($15,000) and Headlands, an experimental facility in Sausalito, Calif. ($10,000).

The Nimoys, who developed the program with arts administrator Katharine DeShaw, say they had nothing to do with the selection. A panel headed by Jock Reynolds, director of the Yale University Art Gallery, chose the recipients from a slate of invited candidates that included major museums, small exhibition spaces and schools.

-- Suzanne Muchnic