The Walters Art Museum has received a $2.5 million gift from Baltimore art collectors Deborah and Philip English to endow and hire a new curator to specialize in the areas of decorative arts, design, and material culture. In addition, the Englishes committed to donating more than 500 objects in their collection of Majolica to the museum.

The Walters will conduct a national search for this position, known as the Deborah and Philip English Curator of Decorative Arts, Design, and Material Culture.
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“This new position funded by the Englishes gives us the ability to further the study of ceramics like Majolica and other examples of material culture, which expands the types of stories we are able to tell and restores this art to its rightful place in history,” said Julia Marciari-Alexander, Andrea B. and John H. Laporte Director. “We are simply thrilled to have this opportunity to integrate the visionary collection the Englishes have created into the Walters, which stewards one of the most significant collections of ceramics from across the globe and across time in the United States.”

​The English Majolica Collection is one of the largest, most comprehensive, and most significant collections of English and Continental-European Majolica given to any U.S. institution. Majolica, a type of molded earthenware known for its brightly colored lead-based glazes, was widely used throughout Victorian society in the form of tableware, decorative objects, and garden ornaments. After debuting at London’s Great Exhibition of 1851, Majolica quickly became ubiquitous in England and America, with works appearing in museum displays, royal palaces, and in the homes of average citizens. The English Majolica Collection contains both monumental pieces created specifically for exhibitions as well as daily ware.

There’s a major new arts philanthropist on the scene.

​MacKenzie Scott, a novelist who also happens to be the former wife of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, announced today that she has donated a staggering $2.7 billion to 286 organizations across the country—including many affiliated with the arts, such as the Studio Museum in Harlem, the New England Foundation for the Arts, and United States Artists. 

This marks the third time in 12 months that Scott, whose fortune Forbes recently estimated at $60 billion, has issued a wave of donations worth a combined ten figures. It’s also the first time she has funded arts organizations at scale. (The latest round of recipients also includes racial justice groups, universities, and other organizations.) 

Absent from the list of arts recipients are big names that wealthy donors often favor, such as the Museum of Modern Art or Lincoln Center. Instead, Scott opted to fund smaller, largely BIPOC-led groups including Project Row Houses in Houston, Texas; the Laundromat Project and Recess in Brooklyn, New York; the East Bay Fund For Artists in Oakland, California; El Museo de Arte Puerto Rico in San Juan; and the National Museum of Mexican Art in Chicago, Illinois. 

​In another departure from traditional high-dollar cultural philanthropy, Scott provides the funds up front and without restrictions, to be used however the organizations see fit.

“Arts and cultural institutions can strengthen communities by transforming spaces, fostering empathy, reflecting community identity, advancing economic mobility, improving academic outcomes, lowering crime rates, and improving mental health,” Scott wrote in blog post announcing the news, “so we evaluated smaller arts organizations creating these benefits with artists and audiences from culturally rich regions and identity groups that donors often overlook.”

A coalition of philanthropic foundations will devote $125 million over three years to New York State’s arts economy as part of Creatives Rebuild New York, an initiative connected to Governor Andrew Cuomo’s plan to remedy the devastating financial impact of the pandemic. Funded mainly by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation with the support of the Ford and Stavros Niarchos Foundations, the program will provide as many as 2,400 artists with guaranteed monthly income and will endow 300 full-time salaried positions across small-to-midsize art organizations statewide.

“The artists whose work helps to sustain us have faced particularly devastating circumstances resulting from unemployment, underemployment, and a lack of predictable paid incomes,” said Elizabeth Alexander, president of the Mellon Foundation. “It’s critical for the vibrancy of our cities that we recognize that making art is work, and artists are among our nation’s most dedicated and necessary drivers of our economy.”

The coronavirus has derailed New York’s cultural sector, which before 2020 had accounted for nearly half a million jobs and generated around $120 billion for the state. While many art institutions around the state have reopened in some form, many are working with decimated workforces and budgets. The performing arts industry has taken the hardest blow, with 50 percent of those jobs being lost statewide, 72 percent in New York City, whose arts and recreation sector suffered a 60 percent drop in employment between February and April of last year.

Following the May 6 formation of the City Artist Corps—a $25 million federally backed effort to put artists in New York City back to work—CRNY’s announcement is the latest of several initiatives in the country to experiment with universal basic income, increasingly considered as a viable solution to the virus’s uneven costs; San Francisco implemented a general income pilot program for artists last October.

“These funds will address the financial hardship and combat systemic inequities that have long plagued the sector,” said Emil J. Kang, the program director for arts and culture at the Mellon Foundation. “This is particularly the case for those artists serving small-to-midsized organizations, often led by and serving BIPOC communities.” 
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Helmed by arts administrator Sarah Calderon, most recently the managing director of ArtPlace America, CRNY will on July 1 name its advisory board, to include artists, policymakers, researchers, and nonprofit leaders. Additional funding details will be announced on August 31.