Of course there are plenty of organizations, as well as the National Endowment for the Arts, which contribute to the well being of the arts, but in 2005 four leading foundations – Ford, Rockefeller, Prudential, and Rasmuson – contributed $22 million to establish United States Artists and accomplish something that up to that point, neither private foundations nor the government had done: provide a secure, sustainable, nationwide funding source devoted to living artists.

The USA Fellows program became United States Artists’ signature initiative – awarding 50 unrestricted grants of $50,000 each year to outstanding performing, visual, media, and literary artists across the country. Past winners include Bill T. Jones, Kara Walker, Kate and Laura Mulleavy of Rodarte, jazz musician Jason Moran, and the writer Sapphire.

Last night at Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York City, United States Artists announced the latest 52 creative visionaries to join this illustrious crowd, including conceptual artist Glenn Ligon, Latino poet Martin Espada, documentary filmmaker Laura Poitras, 1960s art pioneer Douglas Wheeler, and my friend Mel Chin.

The total that has been invested in artists in the last five years is $12.5 million – impressive for any organization, but especially for a start-up that has weathered a tough economic and political climate for the arts. USA Fellows hail from 105 cities in 39 states and Puerto Rico, and range in age from 26 to 87 at the time of their award. Personally, I have over the years been inspired to support Deanna Dikeman, USA Booth Fellow, Visual Arts; Rick Lowe, USA Booth Fellow, Architecture and Design

 and this year Anne Lewis, USA Booth Mattson Fellow, Media.

So can we sit back on our laurels now, believing that the work has been done by those with the resources — the heavy lifters? Well, not quite — not by a long way. While record-breaking sales at auction houses and star-studded art fairs might lead us to believe that artists are living the good life, the unfortunate reality is that many of the best artists in this country — even those considered pioneers in their fields — still struggle to make ends meet and secure funding to create new work.

So United States Artists designed another product — USA Projects — to foster connections between artists and the public and put needed dollars into the hands of working artists coast to coast. And this is where you come in. For as little as $1, anyone can now go to unitedstatesartists.org to connect with and support a great artist and an original project.

What makes this special is that only established artists can fundraise and all donations are tax deductible. All the artists and projects come with USA’s endorsement, so you know that the artists seeking support represent the best in their fields. More than that, with the ability to fund projects that appeal to your own artistic sensibilities you become a real participant in the project, sharing in its inception and following online as the funds reach critical mass and the project is realized. Sure you may not contribute as much as a Ford or a Rockefeller, but the pooled resources achieve the creation of art that informs our times and is a legacy to future generations. It’s also really great fun.

Since the USA Projects alpha site went live in May, more than 75 artists have posted projects and over 1,500 supporters have pledged more than $200,000. Participating artists include choreographers Eiko & Koma, Ronald K. Brown, and Joanna Haigood, visual artists Zoe Strauss and Charles Gaines, guitarist Bill Frisell, designer Stephen Burks, and theater artists Marc Bamuthi Joseph and Rhodessa Jones.

The diversity of the projects, even in this early phase, is pretty spectacular. Philadelphia-based photographer Zoe Strauss exceeded her goal and raised more than $5,000 for “On the Beach,” a project documenting the people and places affected by the catastrophic BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

Documentary filmmaker Heather Courtney of Texas raised more than $5,000 to help complete Where Soldiers Come From, which tells the story of childhood friends from a rural high school in Michigan who joined the National Guard after graduation to secure funds for college. And Seattle comic book artist Jim Woodring got the funding he needed to fulfill his dream of creating a giant steel tip pen.

This gives me hope. Somewhere between the rarified perspective of art world insiders and the disinterested viewpoint of the average American, too little is being done to directly support living artists in this country. But thanks to United States Artists and you, we can now all become modern-day Medicis, one small gift at a time.

Antonio Lysy – the cover of the album
However, what really struck me this morning was the music’s ability to transport me to a culture and land that urged exploration. The pathos of a place and people seemed to hang on each note and I found myself on a mental journey across the open grassland, absorbed in the romance of it and consumed by feelings of desire and fulfillment.

Lalo Schifrin, composer of Pampas
At the end of the track I felt curiously connected to this new world and strangely to my own. Revived, open, receptive, ready to share and to explore.

In the interests of full disclosure I must say that Antonio Lysy and his wife Margaret are dear friends of mine, so I do not write dispassionately about their music or their work but instead am delighted and honored to share their vision with others.

This family, over generations, has taken a passion for music and made it a lifestyle, so it is not unexpected that all the proceeds from the album for the first 5 years will be donated to SOL-LA Music Academy in Santa Monica, Los Angeles. Once again there is a connection, Margaret Lysy is the CEO and Director of SOL-LA, a school ” based on the belief that vibrant cultural education positively affects other areas of learning, and that music education can create bridges across diverse cultures and communities” http://www.sollamusicacademy.org.

On the grounds of SOL-LA

As I pondered these networks and purposeful philanthropy I couldn’t help relating it back to the feeling of “connectiveness” that enveloped me while listening to the Pampas soundtrack.

So do yourself a favor, listen to the soundtrack, you may be inspired to buy the album and like me, maybe you’ll be curiously interested to see what happens at the 2010 Latin Grammy Awards on November 11, in Las Vegas. http://www.latingrammy.com

Antonio Lysy – the cover of the album
However, what really struck me this morning was the music’s ability to transport me to a culture and land that urged exploration. The pathos of a place and people seemed to hang on each note and I found myself on a mental journey across the open grassland, absorbed in the romance of it and consumed by feelings of desire and fulfillment.

Lalo Schifrin, composer of Pampas
At the end of the track I felt curiously connected to this new world and strangely to my own. Revived, open, receptive, ready to share and to explore.

In the interests of full disclosure I must say that Antonio Lysy and his wife Margaret are dear friends of mine, so I do not write dispassionately about their music or their work but instead am delighted and honored to share their vision with others.

This family, over generations, has taken a passion for music and made it a lifestyle, so it is not unexpected that all the proceeds from the album for the first 5 years will be donated to SOL-LA Music Academy in Santa Monica, Los Angeles. Once again there is a connection, Margaret Lysy is the CEO and Director of SOL-LA, a school ” based on the belief that vibrant cultural education positively affects other areas of learning, and that music education can create bridges across diverse cultures and communities” http://www.sollamusicacademy.org.

On the grounds of SOL-LA

As I pondered these networks and purposeful philanthropy I couldn’t help relating it back to the feeling of “connectiveness” that enveloped me while listening to the Pampas soundtrack.

So do yourself a favor, listen to the soundtrack, you may be inspired to buy the album and like me, maybe you’ll be curiously interested to see what happens at the 2010 Latin Grammy Awards on November 11, in Las Vegas. http://www.latingrammy.com

“Les cousins” (“The Cousins”), 1970 by Dorothea Tanning. Photo: The Menil Collection, Houston

It was New York, 1980. The music was “Call Me by Blondie,” “Another Brick In the Wall,” “Magic” by Olivia Newton-John, and “Rock With You,” by Michael Jackson. The Jazz Singer, Fame and Raging Bull were playing in movie theaters. “The Factory” – Andy Warhol’s iconic studio – was in full swing and the elusive doorman Marc Benecke held the patrons of Studio 54 in the 700 person range.

Dominique de Menil’s NYC townhouse today. Photo: S. D. Booth.

I stood in the foyer of the 5-story townhouse of Dominique de Menil — the French born Houston based arts patron and advocate for humanitarian causes — where I was to live for the next two years. Some sixty years my senior, this extraordinary person was also my patron and friend.

It was a journey that I began as an undergraduate art history student at Rice University in Houston. I needed to take a work/study job, and met with Mrs. de Menil, who was offering a position for just such a student. After a few introductory questions, she leaned forward and asked, “Would you do anything I need you to do?” When I said, “Probably, but could you give me an example?” she replied with a fixed stare, “Well, if the toilet broke, what would you do?” I nervously answered, “I would first turn off the water … if I could … and then find a way to clean up the mess.” Dominique smiled and asked me when I could begin.

Perhaps it was my year of traveling around Europe in a VW Van or my background as a “can-do” Texan that got me the job, but Mrs. de Menil threw me into the deep end of working with her art collection. My first task was to transcribe her late husband’s notes into an archival record. It was a wonderful learning experience and I had the great opportunity to work in her Houston home, sitting at the personal desk of John de Menil.

Luisa Lambri – “Untitled” (Menil House, #01), 2009. The view from John de Menil’s desk. Photo: S. D. Booth

On graduating from Rice in 1978, I moved to Paris as a research assistant for an art historian that I had met through Dominique. It was there that I studied further and began my career in art conservation. Once again, Mrs. de Menil was very encouraging and after an internship at the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, and my subsequent acceptance to the Institute of Fine Arts (IFA), Mrs. D — my nickname for Dominique — insisted that I live at her home in New York so that I would not accumulate so much debt. It was one of the ways in which she helped me out in life.

So there I was at my new digs — located only a few blocks from the IFA at East 73rd Street and Lexington. My living quarters were a small basement studio that opened onto an outdoor Max Ernst sculpture garden. However, with access to the house I felt a part of the household of Mrs. D, Jacqueline, her French housekeeper, Gladys or “Gaga,” who had worked for the family for 30 years, and a surprisingly garrulous French-speaking parrot named Cacaloo. A Victor Brauner painting was installed above my bed and among many other riches a bright yellow Mark Rothko painting greeted me on entering the dining room.

The author in front of the de Menils’ Mark Rothko, “No. 10,” 1957. Photo: S. D. Booth.

It was an eclectic environment, as Mrs. D collected many unusual and refined objects. She particularly loved the Surrealists and as for me, I found I was living in a Surrealist landscape — spending valuable moments with the indomitable Dominique, meeting great art historians, writers and curators like Walter Hopps, artists James Turrell (working as his assistant on his “Skyspace” at PS1), and Andy Warhol — at the same time as being absorbed in my studies at IFA. It was a heady mixture of culture, art and ideas that greatly enhanced my educational experience not to mention consciously and unconsciously liberating my imagination.

Walter Hopps, Suzanne Deal Booth and Dominique de Menil. Photo: S. D. Booth.

New York will always be a part of my DNA, from the intellectual and demanding courses at IFA, to gallery openings and art functions ranging from performance-séances to Whirling Dervishes and up ’til dawn discussions about the American landscape tradition and its influence on early Abstract Expressionism, all topics which contributed to my IFA thesis.

The author in the conservation studios at Centre Pompidou, Paris 1983. Photo: S. D. Booth.

I would go on to live in many cities. In Paris, doing an internship in paintings conservation at Centre Georges Pompidou, in Los Angeles at the Getty Conservation Institute, and as a newlywed and mother and the founder of Friends of Heritage Preservation on a year’s “sabbatical” in Rome with my family — but New York and that improbable and extraordinary house on East 73rd Street remains a memory and connection which continues to inform my life, my choices and my work as an art conservation activist.

In Mel’s own words: “The survival of my own ideas may not be as important as a condition I might create for others’ ideas to be realized,” In 2006 Mel went to New Orleans to see what creative actions he could contribute after the Katrina Hurricane left its devastation. His research uncovered the condition of lead (Pb) in the soil in thousands properties throughout the city was far above thresholds established by the Environmental Protection Agency. Mel further learned that 30 -50% of New Orleans inner-city children had lead poisoning even before the storm. As many of us know, lead poisoning causes learning disabilities, violent behavior, and contributes to medical conditions including diabetes, nervous system disorders, blood, bone and brain disease and up to this point, very little funding has been directed to this critical issue.

style=”float:left;margin:10px” Fundred from the collection of over 7000 drawings once protected in the SAFEHOUSE. It is now on the way to DC.

Soil scientists estimated that at least $300 million was needed to remedy the contamination. Raising that kind of funding was a daunting prospect and Mel approached the problem creatively by coming up with the Fundred Dollar Bill Project.What exactly is the Fundred Dollar Bill Project? It is a nationwide drawing/teaching project designed to raise awareness of the environmental threat of lead contamination and to engage people through making art. The heart of the project is to have children, educators, families, churches, community groups , etc. create their own version of a $100 bill using a common template(supplied online). These Fundred dollar bills will be picked up by a special armored truck, and then presented to the U.S. Congress in a conceptual even exchange for real dollar funding to be directed to making the lead-polluted soils in New Orleans safe. The plan is then to instigate the same program in every city in the country that is afflicted by lead poisoning.

style=”float:left;margin:10px” THE SAFEHOUSE in the 8th ward, St. Roch neighborhood New Orleans

Right now the 8,500 lb. armored truck is outside of Denver ready to trek across the frozen northwest toward Seattle, planning to arrive in Los Angeles by March 11. It will follow a scheduled 20,000 mile zigzag, cross-country path to Collection Centers at over 125 schools and art centers. It runs on used veggie oil donated from school cafeterias to fuel its singular mission. The goal is to deliver a payload of Fundred dollar bills to the steps of Congress for an even exchange by mid July, 2010.

style=”float:left;margin:10px” Joshua Dawson of Homedale Elementary, Harvey La with the armored truck

So check it out…go to the website, download a template, get your kids, rouse up local teachers, friends, educators, and get working on your own Fundred dollar bill. Become part of creating a currency by the people for the people…art can move mountains, even lead-polluted ones. Besides, it’ll be fun.
For more info go to the Fundred/Paydirt website: www.fundred.org

Devion Charlot with Fundred dollar bills

Maybe it’s an El Greco oil painting or a 1st century Roman sculpture, maybe it’s a 12thcentury “Garuda” at Preah Khan in Angkor, Cambodia or maybe it’s the 1980′s Donald Judd concrete sculptures in Marfa, Texas. Art, artifacts, buildings, sites — those things in our past, whether from 20 minutes ago or 20 centuries ago, define where we have come from as human beings and allow us to see more clearly where we might be heading. It can also help us to embrace and understand intangible culture as experienced through language, music and social customs.

Though this is different from environmental conservation, it’s not exclusive of it; if we don’t have a viable planet, we don’t have anything – but I believe that to really be ‘in touch’ we have to understand and protect our human past as well.

For example: If I say the word “apple,” it is possible that you might think of a delicious red fruit hanging from a tree (some say responsible for original sin) but you’re more likely to think of the latest app for your cell phone. This isn’t random; the little white apple with the bite out of it gets our attention because of a long history of Emblemata (images that sum up or evoke a certain thought or feeling) that can be traced through human history — all the way back to cave painting. We’re hip to Apple’s new products partly because of our history of cultural symbolism. We get it, not just because we’re smart or because the gurus at Apple are smart, but because human beings have been using and refining emblems for centuries.

Vermeer used paint to reveal light in his work and the world marveled at this new way of seeing, of being in the moment. This tradition allowed for contemporary artists like James Turrell to use light in ways that question and redefine our perceptions. As Isaac Newton so eloquently put it, “If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.” The past informs the future.

With all this in mind, twelve years ago I gathered a small group of like-minded friends and formed the Friends of Heritage Preservation (www.fohpinfo.org). Our goal was to respond to critical preservation needs in our own community and abroad; to be active citizens in the quest to preserve our cultural past, and to appreciate contemporary monuments of our own time. Just as with environmental conservation, the future depends on the stewardship of all of our resources.

To date, we have been involved in 41 projects on 4 continents and continue to seek out projects that form a vital link to our cultural heritage. We’ve seen that it is possible for individuals to make a great difference particularly when their involvement is combined with other people and resources.

When you embrace your passion and pool your resources with friends, the impact in the world can be significant. Making a difference in this way is an attainable goal for many people and the rewards are often both powerfully enriching and of lasting cultural value.