The Pew grants: Method or madness?

Our contributor Jonathan M. Stein recently criticized the Pew Fellowships in the Arts for radically altering its grant process. Effective next year, putative applicants for these coveted grants— $60,000 per artist— won't be allowed to apply. Instead, they must wait until a committee of anonymous nominators invites them to apply. In effect, the Pew is telling artists: "Don't call us— we'll call you."

"Many talented artists who have won Pew Fellowships in the past would not make it through the new system," Jonathan warns.

Jonathan is too kind. The Pew's new policy doesn't deserve to be criticized; it deserves to be ridiculed. It betrays a profound ignorance of what art is all about— which is ultimately communication.

Think about it. Art above all is about finding creative ways to communicate. The intended audience may be large or small or even as yet unborn. It may consist of a single grant officer at a foundation. But still the artist strives to connect with it. When the Pew says, "Don't communicate with us," in effect it is telling artists, "Don't do what you were born to do."

Non-violent football?

The Pew claims that its new policy will spare artists the time and drudgery of filling out mundane grant applications when they could be writing poems or painting triptychs. But telling an artist, "We'll spare you the trouble of communicating," is like telling a football player, "We'll spare you the trouble of banging into large men." It's like telling a pianist, "We'll spare you the stress of performing in front of a live audience." It's like telling a journalist, "We'll relieve you of the pressure of meeting deadlines." It's like— oh, you get my drift.

A playwright I know was once inspired to write a screenplay designed for the actress Margot Kidder. When she finished it, she shipped her screenplay off to Margot Kidder. She did not sit by the phone waiting for Margot Kidder to call and inquire, "Have you written any scripts for me lately?"

A method to this madness?

Whoever designed this new Pew policy is either brilliant or foolish. Everything in life is a test, after all. By refusing to accept conventional grant applications, perhaps the Pew is testing artists' ingenuity in attracting the foundation's attention. We may yet see mimes performing in the Pew's lobby, or murals painted on the side of its building, or tenors serenading outside Rebecca Rimel's window, or poets advertising their work in the Chronicle of Philanthropy.

It would be nice to think that the new grant procedure is the Pew's ingenious way of building character through adversity. But ingenuity rarely results when you're sitting atop a $3.9 billion cushion and you have no stockholders, customers or constituents to demand your head if you screw up.

Money can buy many things, but wisdom isn't one of them. Martin Luther, half a millennium ago, provided the definitive explanation for the Pew's baffling new arts policy: "Riches are the least worthy gifts which God can give men. Therefore, God commonly gives riches to foolish people, to whom he gives nothing else."

Of course, Martin Luther was a bitter man. But he did know how to attract attention. Come to think of it, just what was it that Luther nailed to that church door in Wittenberg? Could it have been an application for a Pew Fellowship in the Arts?♦


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