I’ve been making offhand remarks about Ruth Arts as if we all know what I’m talking about. The truth is, they weren’t super on my radar until this year, despite being one of the biggest (the biggest?) arts funders in the state, since being established in 2022, two years after Ruth Kholer’s death. They’re a $440 million foundation whose stated goal is to give away $17 million each year. To put that in perspective, the Nohl Fund, the financial power behind the Nohl Fellowship Grant, sits on $11 million total.

The foundation currently has a collection of ten granting programs, most of which have gotten their due press, though the writing on the subject hasn’t been especially thoughtful. Mostly just stating dollar amounts and throwing confetti. There is a New York Times piece that sketchily covers the organization’s founding, as well as a Q&A from the Journal Sentinel, though neither goes much deeper than the program descriptions on Ruth Arts’ own website.

Which is weird, if you think about it. Because where public art funding is concerned, every dollar spent spawns another comments section troll to explain why it was a mistake. But private philanthropy we treat like Christmas presents, politely thanking our grandma’s second cousin for the gift that was clearly intended for someone ten years younger. I guess we’re afraid of looking ungrateful.

This is the assumption I want to question, that philanthropy is owed nothing but gratitude. That if we’re throwing anything, it had better damn well be confetti.

Cool chart, huh? I drew it with three Crayola markers. I do have Excel (actually, just the free knockoff version) but I thought this was more honest. It really gives the sense that I wrote this whole thing in my underwear.

The seven slices represent the total of Ruth Arts’ granting, minus two other programs and a scholarship, whose dollar amounts have not been publicly announced. My best guess is that the $11.34 million represented here accounts for about 90% of their yearly spending. A little sketchy, sure, but also the best picture we currently have of the foundation’s finances. Not to brag.

If you’re wondering, yes, I did ask Ruth Arts for the official numbers. The response I got was, “The breakdown of funding by grant program is not public.” Which is an interesting use of passive voice, but we’ll get to that.

I can appreciate that an arts funding megalith has better things to do than give me a tour of their personal finances. Except, let’s not forget, these aren’t personal finances we’re talking about. As I said above, Ruth Kholer’s fortune was left to us, to artists. Sure, I’m being glib in saying so, but this is the heart of the issue. Who is this money supposed to be for? Who gets to decide? Ruth’s philanthropic philosophy, and the supposed guiding principle of the foundation, is “All the art for all the people.” Which is a slogan I can get behind, as long as it’s more than just a slogan.

The point is not that each of us is owed a check, but that, in as far as Ruth Arts considers itself a democratic supporter of artists, we’re entitled to say in how the money is spent. The good news is that the foundation agrees, or at least their web designer does.

In Dialogue, New Possibilities, Artist-Driven, Trying New Things--This is the brand identity that Ruth Arts has crafted for itself. I don’t mean for that to sound cynical. An organization of this size should have a killer marketing team, and should know what it stands for.

And it goes deeper than the surface too. Their flagship program, Artist Choice, in many ways succeeds in living up to the promise of forward-thinking, democratic arts funding. Each year, they choose about fifty artists (though only eighteen in 2024) to serve as nominators, who then go on to pick organizations to receive funding. The nominators are from all around the country, giving the program a broad focus, while still sprinkling some funding locally. Milwaukee Film and Woodland Pattern are among the local Artist Choice recipients.

Except, on a closer look, Artist Choice isn’t as democratically minded as it seems. For one thing, nominators don’t get to pick grant recipients directly, but simply recommend non-profits which the foundation gets to choose from. It’s also worth mentioning that Ruth Arts’ “Core” program, which was designed as an extension of Artist Choice, does not have the same democratic selection process. Basically, Core allows previous Artist Choice winners to apply for operational support, and the foundation (it’s not specified who, specifically) chooses who to fund from that predetermined pool.

The reason why this is important is because Core makes up nearly a third of their yearly grant spending, by far their biggest program. By comparison, Artist Choice only accounts for about 11% of their yearly granting. This year the gap widened, as Core was expanded from $3.4 Million to $4.5 million, while the number of Artist Choice grantees was cut in half.

Though all along, it’s been Artist Choice that has taken center stage. In fact, looking at their website, Instagram, and press coverage, the programs that consistently get the most attention are those that are local, artist-centric, and welcoming of new applicants. However, these types of programs make up a very small slice of the pie. In fact, they only have one program that fulfills all three promises, Wisconsin Artist Grants.

WAG is actually an umbrella term that refers to the money awarded to The Nohl Alumni Award, Open Fund, and MIAD’s Faculty and Staff grant. All together, it’s only 2% of their yearly granting, but if you’re a Milwaukee-based artist who’s been directly funded by Ruth Arts, it’s probably the reason why.

Ultimately, there’s nothing inherently wrong with any of this. We need big, national organizations to fund non-profits’ operating costs. We need funders who continue to support organizations they’ve already made an investment in, even if that means turning away some new applicants. Personally, I’d prefer to see the money and decision-making spread more evenly, but that doesn’t mean I’m against Ruth Arts for disagreeing.

Overall, Ruth Arts does vastly more good than they do harm. And that’s the bigger picture I want to keep in focus, even as I go on to say that their dishonest branding really amounts to much more. It’s a failure of leadership.

$11 million is a lot of money, and it’s a lot even when split between hundreds of organizations or thousands of artists. It’s the kind of money that can bulldoze our cultural landscape into whatever shape the powers that be would like. And whether you, or I, or anyone on their staff likes it, that’s the role they’ve taken, that of a leader. So what kind of leader are they?

If we look past the branding, at the dollars actually spent, what we see is a commitment to non-local (79%), non-democratic (87%) arts funding that favors organizations over artists, and especially orgs they’ve funded in the past. If you’ve been wondering what the giant slice labeled “Legacy” is for, it’s just that, the Ruth Kholer Legacy fund, which gives money to organizations Ruth “felt personally aligned with.” Together with the Core grant, it makes up more than half of their granting budget.

With all due respect, fuck that. I have nothing against the Paul and Matilda Wegner Grotto (mostly because I’ve never heard of it), but exactly how many tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars are we going to send them? And for how long? And why? Maybe if we had answers to any of these questions, we’d agree with Ruth’s decision. Maybe we’d decide to send them even more money. But we have no way of knowing because, as I can tell you from experience, all Ruth Arts has to say on the subject is, “The breakdown of funding by grant program is not public.”

If we’re being generous, we’ll assume that the marketing discrepancies are not deceptive, but a mistake. Ruth is still figuring itself out, which is fair. But none of these contradictions are irreconcilable.

From what I can see, it’s an identity crisis that boils down to one question: Does Ruth Arts want to represent the interests of a person or a people? Is their goal to make safe bets on art orgs Ruth Kholer happened to vibe with, or do they want to live up to the promise of inclusive, risk-taking, democratic arts funding?

Why it’s left to me, a guy typing in his underwear, to ask the question, I cannot tell you.

I’m grateful for Ruth Arts, but my gratitude isn’t incompatible with criticism. Because the point of criticism, at least mine, is not to trash anyone, but to hold up my end of the democratic bargain. I don’t expect a two-year-old organization to give us the kind of leadership we need, but I do expect them to be open to discussion. If they’re not, then the talking is left up to us. I hope you all are as eager for it as I am.

Thoughts?

_{The Footnote: So, funny story, Ruth Arts doesn’t have a 990 form. I guess because they’re new? So I had to source the numbers from different places around the web. If anyone feels like checking my work, here are the links: $1.25 M for Artist Choice, $3.4 M for Core Grants, $2.5 M for Legacy Fund, $0.24 M for Wisconsin Artist Grants, $0.95 for Wisconsin Special Project grants, $1.5 M for Thought Leaders ($4.5 M over three years), and $1.5 M for Sites and Stewardship. I wasn’t able to find numbers for their Future Studies and Global Formations programs, so I left them out of my chart. However, neither of them received much press relative to the other programs, and based on additional research, I estimate they amount to somewhere around 1 M total, yearly. Worth mentioning that neither funds Wisconsin-based programs or operates off a democratic selection process.}

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