The Art World: What If…?!, Season 2, Episode 12: Karen Patterson

This time we welcome Karen Patterson, the Executive Director of the Ruth Foundation for the Arts. The organization immediately became a major player when it launched in 2022, announcing plans to give away up to $20 million a year to arts organizations, thanks to a $440 million bequest from Ruth DeYoung Kohler. We delve into the what-ifs of philanthropy, the foundation's ethos, and its ambitious initiatives. Through a focus on generosity, experimentation, and consideration, Ruth Arts aims to transform the philanthropic landscape. “What if we made a big difference? What if people saw themselves as valuable?” Karen asks. “What if people saw themselves as cared for?”

Transcript:

Charlotte Burns: Hello and welcome to The Art World: What If…?!, a podcast in which we imagine new futures. I’m your host Charlotte Burns. 

[Audio of guests]

This time we welcome Karen Patterson, the Executive Director of the Ruth Foundation for the Arts. 

The organization immediately became a major player when it launched in 2022, announcing plans to give away up to $20 million a year to arts organizations, thanks to a $440 million bequest from Ruth DeYoung Kohler [II]. 

We dive into the ‘what ifs’ of philanthropy, the foundation's ethos, and its ambitious initiatives. Through a focus on generosity, experimentation, and consideration, Ruth Arts aims to transform the philanthropic landscape. “What if we made a big difference? What if people saw themselves as valuable? What if people saw themselves as cared for?” Karen asks.  

All this and much, much more. Let’s dive in. 

[Musical interlude] 

Karen, thank you so much for joining me today. It's such a pleasure to have you here.

Karen Patterson: Pleasure's all mine. I'm excited to be in conversation with you.

Charlotte Burns: I thought we could begin with a ‘what if.’ What if you were suddenly responsible for spending $16 million to $20 million dollars annually? How might you begin to think about that? What do you do when you're in that position? It's such an amazing thing to have to do and be charged with. Talk me through what happened.

Karen Patterson: The first ‘what if’ for me was what if I was asked to honor the legacy of Ruth Kohler, who was my boss when I served as a curator at the John Michael Kohler Art Center, and that had a wide variety of options in my mind. She was such a big force in my life and a visionary in her own right. But then you're right, the ‘what if’ became, how do you translate that task into philanthropic work? What if you were asked to translate this legacy into generosity and into the distribution of $16 million. I'll admit that the legacy component was more important than the funding for me because she had recently passed in 2020. I took the job in 2022. Her presence still and was still so omnipotent in Wisconsin and generally through the art world. Because we are still in such a startup mode, your ‘what if’ question has so many ‘what ifs’ embedded inside of it. But the first thing I felt comfortable doing was setting aside the dollar amount and talking to trustees and family members about Ruth so that I could get a sense of what was most important to them because I knew in the back of my head that I would have to translate what they're saying to me into a philanthropic gesture. And then $16 million came right after that. [Laughs]

Charlotte Burns: So how do you translate a person and their legacy? This is at the heart of so much philanthropy and so many foundations and estates, and you didn't have a totally strict stringent set of rules, which is actually what the advice that most people give when setting up a foundation in the state because things shift over time and so foundations and estates need to be able to do that too. But still, that's a lot to have to do quite quickly and no doubt with a lot of emotions running high. How do you approach that? What do you do first? A lot of listening, I'm imagining.

Karen Patterson: Yeah, much to my parents' surprise, my folklore degree came into handy here. [Laughs] I have an undergrad in folklore and one of the most important lessons I learned in those studies was people tell you what's important to them no matter what you ask them. I will say many people were really eager to share with me because they knew what was coming. They knew that this was going to become a major player in terms of arts philanthropy. I think the first task was trying to understand what my role was. There were family members, trustees, community members, organizations, artists, there were many people who had a stake in the future of this foundation and I had to understand what I would represent and in many ways, although I didn't know at the time, I can now see my work as just representing the present day. Always. The present-day for arts philanthropy, the present day for organizations, for artists, for decisions to make because there would be so many people who would be thinking about who Ruth was, or who Ruth might have been, or the future of museums, or the future of the idea of regionality. I knew that I had to be the one to take things to the present, and I think about that quite a bit still.

Charlotte Burns: So what made you realize that? Something in you realized there was a need to be present quite literally.

Karen Patterson: I think it came from the curatorial experience. That is your job as a mediator. That is your job to see and to translate and to care for. And so when you think about some of the biggest gestures of caring, it's feeling present with someone. 

Why I didn't know it at the time was because of just the sheer nature of our startup mode. I think there wasn't a lot of time to reflect or even to have any vantage point at all, other than do what you're doing right now. And so the idea of being present was by sheer necessity then and now in hindsight, I see it as of great value while other people had to be in different time frames and different modes and different eras. I found myself being the one that was present.

Charlotte Burns: Were you the only person who worked with Ruth?

Karen Patterson: On staff, yes. On our trustees, we have Ruth's best friend from kindergarten, and we also have Ruth's lawyer who worked with her to set up the trust documents, and then, of course, the fiduciary agent, the bank. But, they all knew Ruth in various different ways, but I'm the only staff member that knew Ruth personally.

Charlotte Burns: And from what I understand, she was larger than life in some ways. Can you describe some of that? I heard she set up a kindergarten on campus at one point, did lots of things that were in some ways quite radical.

Karen Patterson: She was, and she has often been described as a visionary, and I think that's because her vision was so large, and she was always looking to what the possibilities were. Did not like to do things twice, did not like to follow the rules—although she wouldn't consider herself a rule breaker, she just understood that some structures advance some people and hold other people back. And so she was always looking for the way through. 

And you're right. She started the first arts-based preschool in the country that's still ongoing at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center. She started a national preservation program that strictly focuses on artist-built environments and vernacular art environments. This week, the John Michael Kohler Arts Center is celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Arts/Industry residency program that places artists in the Kohler factory alongside all your sinks and toilets. So these ideas of doing something that may feel challenging structurally, but actually in the end benefits both parties that felt challenged by it.

Charlotte Burns: When you're trying to translate that into, “What would Ruth do,” what's your benchmark?

Karen Patterson: She was my boss for seven years and she was the director and I was a curator so all my ideas went through her exhibition ideas—artists to work with, ideas to explore. So I felt in my heart that I could think about the moments of what it was like to present an idea to Ruth. She had this saying that she would not necessarily say explicitly, but it was a premise that I had in my mind every time I presented to her. Keep in mind she did not use computers or was not comfortable using computers and did not think that this was the best way to look at art and so you had to go into her office with your ideas ready to articulate and ready with a plan B, C, D just in case that wasn't what was going to move her that day. I felt a tremendous amount of responsibility to come out of the gates with something that was going to be ahead of the game. And not in a competitive way but maybe doing something that felt exciting, that felt thrilling, that felt that all eyes were going to be on it to see what was going to happen. And that was what it was like to work with Ruth on exhibitions. She really believed in a sense of discovery not just in the artist but exhibition design. She really cared about how shows came together and she also really cared about my instinct and my intuition. She really wanted to make sure that I was speaking from the heart, that I was talking about this artist because I felt strongly about something about their work in my gut. She could tell if I didn't. And in a more abstract way, that is how I've been approaching my work, in a gut, instinctual, intuitive way that feels both passionate and personal, but in some ways, it feels very structural.

Charlotte Burns: How do you embed that into the team? How do you embed that into the structure of the organization?

Karen Patterson: We have one big table that we sit around very practically speaking. A lot of our ideas feel curatorial in nature. We think about how to bring something together. What components feed off of each other? How do things respond to each other? I personally believe we've hired well. We've hired people who have also made careers out of instincts and intuition and work ethic. We have people here who believe in hard work and believe in the joy that comes from turning over every stone to make sure that this is at its best. We talk a lot about the privilege of starting and we talk a lot about the privilege of having resources. When you have these resources you really feel a responsibility to go above and beyond. 

And one of the things that we talk also about is coming from the nonprofit to the philanthropic world, you really have to be caring about everybody all the time. What is hospitality? What does it mean to show up for someone and anticipate their needs? Not asking them to perform, but just know that there's a promise here, that there's hope here. And I think we've hired people who know that naturally.

Charlotte Burns: When we were discussing the show in advance, you said that you were thinking about transforming a legacy, which we've discussed. But some of the words that you used stood out to me; a statement on generosity, and experimentation, and consideration, and in this current climate of the art world. Do you want to talk me through those three things, which are really specific choices to make, and then the contrast of this current climate?

Karen Patterson: I think my experience has told me that you can't always be generous, experimental, and considerate in the current climate in the art world. I think you might have to pick one or you might not even get to do all of those things because of the structure of where you work or just feeling underappreciated. It's very hard to feel generous when you feel underappreciated. It's also hard to feel supported when you want to be experimental. It's hard to test new ideas and being considerate takes time. Being considerate means that you might have to let your first idea go. It might mean that the idea you're fighting for isn't the idea that gets across the finish line, and that takes collaboration, that takes listening to each other, and that can feel messy. I think people who think that collaboration is a logical path have never actually done collaboration. It's very complex and it takes a lot longer. And I don't know that the current art world has that time or pace. And so I wanted to make sure that those were words that felt appropriate for Ruth in my experience, but also in the experience from the people that loved her. And I also felt that having been in the nonprofit world, I've seen some of the best and some of the worst and those three words really make me feel at my best when I want to feel creative and when I want to feel impactful. 

The “and, and, and” speaks to the exponential possibility of this role and our role in arts philanthropy right now. There's always going to be another idea. There are more good ideas than we could possibly fund in our lifetime. So there's one more thing to think about. And it also speaks to the exponential quality of how we find out about organizations. This has been an incredible learning experience for me through the Artist Choice awards where the artists have pointed us to organizations all across this country from small towns to larger cities to grassroots organizations to residencies and so you find out not only about these wonderful places, but also their very specific needs. 

[Musical interlude]

Charlotte Burns: So let’s talk a little bit about art philanthropy because I was looking up some numbers before this. The culture of philanthropy in America is the envy of other nations. It's driven by the country's enormous wealth. The US is the world's largest wealth market by a significant margin. It accounts for a remarkable 32 percent of global wealth, 36 percent of the world's millionaires, according to a recent study. A lot of that's finding its way into private philanthropy. There is more giving in the US than in other countries like in the UK. So there's always been philanthropy, but there is this sort of boom in artist estates and foundations. How do you think about that as someone who is very much part of a wave of powerful organizations?

When you launched, you were right up there at the top, as Joel Wachs told The New York Times and The [Andy] Warhol Foundation [for the Visual Arts] ostensibly is one of the most powerful organizations in terms of the support it gives. It's a lifeline for so many organizations around the country. It gives around $17 million away a year Joel told The New York Times—which is less than you guys give away. Put that into context for me, how you think about that? And you have other peers moving into the field as well who are giving away significant sums.

Karen Patterson: One of the things I was thinking about when you said that was that I wasn't thinking about this in 2015. And although that's true, I have been thinking about artists’ legacies as part of my curatorial process. One of the first projects that I did—and actually it was the subject of my thesis—was Ray Yoshida's home collection. He was a painter and a teacher at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. And it's actually how I was able to apply for a job at the Kohler Art Center because his collection was in transit from storage to the museum. And I felt that the job of how to translate someone's specific home and his legacy into an exhibition for those who may know him and those who may not know him, including family members, what would that allow for? And I thought about that when you said that because what artists’-endowed foundations and what artists’ legacy work allows for is specificity and togetherness, which I think is really important when it comes to philanthropy now. I know that the idea of doing things together and of course, there's words like “participatory grant-making” and “trust-based philanthropy” and things like this. But the idea that I am here because of Ruth's generosity only infuses a layer of togetherness and collaboration in what we do. Ruth's legacy means that I'm not trying to be everything for everyone. I'm trying to be very specific and work with my colleagues on collaborating with other foundations in filling a need. 

So there's people that are doing things very well—our peers in philanthropy, and especially in artist foundations. And so how do we add to the conversation?

How can we be additive to this? And I think that is a very important gift that artists’-endowed foundations allow for, this idea of a continuum. This didn't start with me, will not end with me. This idea that there was creativity and experimentation at the very core of artists. They are in a position of having a legacy because they received some level of success and what were they known for? What challenges did they break through and how do you translate that into a philosophy of giving? I have always been interested, maybe that does go back to my folklore degree. I didn't know there was a path that I was on, but now I can say that I’ve always been interested in making sure that you can honor elements of the past by contributing to its relevancy in the present. If that makes sense. You can bring things forward. You can allow for new possibilities with elements of the past. It's not, you don't start here with ground zero in that way. There are things that we need to understand in order for us to be better in the future. And I think an artists’-endowed foundation and legacy work allows you to do that work. 

I think there's also very real elements of our work that contributed to our early reception and that is that we are new. Although this foundation existed for Ruth in her lifetime, she started the RDK foundation—which are her initials—in 1984. We are able to start fresh in 2022. And we learned a lot being in the nonprofit world through our time. But when you start something new in 2022, you have a lot to consider but there are very glaring issues that need to be addressed. And we did not have the real burden that other foundations may have, which is turning a barge around making change happen at a very large scale is very difficult to do. And often at the expense of staff and that sheer exhaustion that they may feel to try to make change happen. We were able to start.

Charlotte Burns: So when you and I first spoke, you were at the beginning of thinking through that process, and you're much further into it now, obviously. The foundation has rolled out an artist-led grant-making program. It gives unrestricted multi-year support. It convenes leaders to discuss timely topics. It's building a new art space. What if artists led the discussions, which is something you spoke about at the very beginning, you were very clear on that right from the off—seek advice for where the need was. It was grounded in your initial conversations with talking to artists.

Karen Patterson: I think that's a really great place to start. And I also really appreciate the prompt of ‘what if.’ It's something that I've thought about as a curator and most of the exhibitions that I love the most are a question, offer more questions. The idea of starting with artists was based on what I heard the most about Ruth. That talking with artists brought about change through the decades and through the generations, whether that's in a residency program, a preschool program, preservation program, a new way of thinking about exhibitions of legacy work, it always for her started with an artist and that was something that was in the water at Kohler. And so I knew that I wanted to start with a conversation about artists. I also knew from my own experience and the experience of my colleagues that artists have pointed us to the most exciting places and I wanted to make sure that we were initially funding places that artists love because there's one thing to say that you support artists. And it's another thing for artists to say that they felt supported. And I really wanted to start with organizations that artists told me if they felt supported and that's where Artist Choice came to be. And it was very straightforward with a Google form and a little bit of a chain mail situation where I asked one artist to ask another artist and we came up with a wonderful list that we then started to build our other programs around. 

As you said, we knew that we wanted to do multi-year unrestricted grants because working in the museum world, what a gift. What a gift for you to have multi-year granting, and for it to be given to you with a level of trust and care that you knew what to do with the funds. And this was about your promising future as an organization, not our level of control over it. And so through the Artist Choice, we noticed a few organizations that were nominated several times by artists. And that just felt intuitively a great place to start. Across the nation, several artists named this one place. So what is it? Why? And through that, we found organizations that are not only dealing with exciting community-based programming, but they are also not neglecting the organizational needs of their institution at the same time. We realize that where we need to be is in smaller organizations. I wouldn't say that in terms of budget size, but in terms of programming. People have a direct relationship with the communities that they serve. 

Then we developed these multi-year programs with different themes. One being thought leaders. I was aware of maybe a leadership crisis that the museum world was facing and I wanted to support the leaders that need the support to do good work. And I also wanted them to find colleagues. Being an executive director can be very isolating. And how can you work across fields to gain support from your peers? And that's where the thought leader program came about. They don't work necessarily in the same realms. We have artist-endowed foundations, we have community spaces, we have residencies, but I thought actually their difference would bring them closer together. And I feel like that's true. 

We also started a program called Sites & Stewardship, which is again, multi-year, about the relationship to locality and art making. We didn't want to neglect the idea that Ruth was a champion of your biggest ideas and that big ideas should be everywhere. And the care that it takes, which is both capital projects and community building when it comes to placemaking. 

And then Future Studies is our program that is our artist-led initiatives that might have originated in a larger structure, whether that's art publishing or studio visits or residencies. And now they're trying to get out from out of that bigger structure to be smaller and more nimble. And we want to help them do that. It's a little bit more complex, but it's also about the risk-taking. How do you fund something at the very beginning without expecting results or prescribing the results? And that's the idea of Future Studies. We're building something for the future.

Charlotte Burns: Talk me through that a little bit, because one of the things I wanted to ask you is about what if we reconsidered risk? Because you'd said something in an interview that I didn't, I wanted to ask you about. I don't know if this is related or different, you said, “We knew multi-year general operating support was needed because we used to be the ones asking for it, but what has been surprising is that now it's being celebrated as something that's considered risky. What does that tell you?” What did you mean? So, operating support is considered risky now. Is that what you meant?

Karen Patterson: I think it was a bit of a punchy answer, but I was surprised to learn what we would be celebrated for. I really thought it was going to be for the design of these programs. Maybe that’s just my curatorial ego shining through, but I was surprised to hear that what we were being celebrated for was asking a pool of people, artists, who to give money to and then giving unrestricted grants to that organization. And that felt risky for a lot of people. How will you know? How will you know if it's a good organization? How will you know if they'll spend the money wisely? Will you ask for reporting? All these big questions that came from us, which are very legitimate questions. I didn't think that that was as risky as it has been perceived. We're showing that maybe it's because we came from the field that this all has to happen together. We can't set ourselves outside of what's happening in nonprofit organizations. You have to be alongside them. We have the biggest ability to engender trust because we have the resources to offer. And so you have to start that way, in my opinion. 

Charlotte Burns: No, it's really interesting. It's a very paternalistic approach to be like, we'll only trust you if you give us constant feedback and we might not give you the money again once you've proven it. It's really interesting that to just say to people, “We trust you. We'll give you the money off you go,” is considered radical. 

Karen Patterson: And also that we trust artists in the right direction too. And they're trusting us with their name. It's their reputation. They're putting names for it as well. So I think what it feels like is everyone's on the line here and everyone is doing their part.

Charlotte Burns: And so what for you are the metrics of success? Like how do you define them? Whether your programs succeed or fail, what is it for you that makes you think, okay, that one was a good one? Is it just getting the money out the door every year?

Karen Patterson: I think our success is based on the variety of organizations in our pool and the scale of them. Truthfully, I have learned about 75 percent of these organizations through Artist Choice. And so the success for us, I think, is being pointed to new directions and being shown new ways of working.

I honestly have not thought about success in the way that you're asking it. Last year, success was doing something twice. Okay. We're doing it again. And then maybe the convenings have been a wonderful sign of success for us, bringing strangers together in Marfa, or Milwaukee and seeing an immediate connection and an immediate need to want to connect. They were sharing ideas knowing that they were in a room full of like-minded creative people. That felt like a success that people showed up for us just as much as we showed up for them.

Charlotte Burns: I remember you describing the concept of those convenings to me a while ago, and I've spoken since to people who've attended who've said, and I quote, “The best thing I've ever attended in the art world, ever. No competition.” That there was careful, caring, really great thinkers, incredibly thoughtful events that were designed carefully to engender creativity.

Karen Patterson: We wanted to make sure that…well, we love a care package. That's just generally who we are. We wanted to make sure the tote bags were perfect, wanted to make sure that everyone felt an element of surprise and joy. No worries. All you had to do was show up. And if you liken that to showing up one of your best parties or your friend who's amazing at hosting, everything is taken care of and they are able to relax and be present with you. That was something that we took with us and we just wanted to show them how much we care because through the process of Artist Choice, you don't always get to meet everybody that you're funding in a lot of ways. Maybe it's a zoom, maybe it's an email, but when you bring, in this case, the thought leaders together, you're nervous. It's like a first date. And so we wanted to put our best foot forward and we wanted them to like us just as much as we liked them. And, it was vulnerable and it was thought-provoking. But there were no metrics there. There were no goals to accomplish. We knew that it was going to help us inform future programs and we knew that it was going to help share information to other funders who might be interested in kind of what does capacity building really mean, or what is capital investment, or some of those kind of buzzwords that you hear all the time. And we knew that we would have that information but in the moment, what everyone really needed was care and rest. And they needed to not make another decision, which I think you can relate to when you're in the art world. You're just faced with a barrage of decisions to make all the time. And you can feel the fatigue of worrying about making the right choice of the livelihoods that you're caring about the decisions that you're going to make, and if there's going to be backlash, and all these kinds of things. And so we knew that from our own personal experiences, that they might be feeling decision fatigue. They might be feeling the weight of their programming, they might be feeling the sheer pressure of their role, whatever it may be. And we just wanted to say, this is a place where your shoulders might drop a little bit and that you're human. And these are people doing this work and I think we all felt that way. 

Charlotte Burns:  A lot of that feels tied to the fields that you've come from. There's a lot of unhappiness within workers in the field, in the cultural field. There's a lot of disconnect between the sources of funding usually and the staff and the cultural workers. It was interesting what you said earlier about institutions that say they support artists and artists saying they feel supported and it's an interesting distinction. You said in a previous interview, “The biggest challenge we've encountered was to build a healthy workplace and let people undo some of the behaviors they've had on the nonprofit side.” And the convening's focus on healthy work environments is an apparent success. How do you take those learnings and the workplaces you're hoping to foster internally and fund them more broadly? Is that something you're focused on as well? Because I know that the programs right now don’t address that but is that something you’d like to address? 

Karen Patterson: I think thought leader program is about capacity building and structural change. So for example, there are artists’-endowed foundations, like I said, who are working on legacy work. There are people thinking about succession planning, about accessible residencies, about educational models that are no longer viable and how do they build these relationships, institutional partnerships, board change? They are all thinking about those things and for me, a lot of those things contributed to either a wonderful work environment or a very stressful work environment. And when your grant programming only funds programming, all of those other things like succession planning, like board management, like benefits, HR issues are not fundable in that way. And so you never really get an opportunity to address them. And they never really feel like they can be a priority because the funding only goes to one lane of all the things that you do. And so what we hoped with our unrestricted grants was that we could have a conversation of where are they putting the money? What is their priority? If it isn't programming, where would they put it? And that has been very telling to us in terms of where the needs are and where the funding may not be yet. 

Charlotte Burns: In what way? What’s been revealing so far? 

Karen Patterson: I think a lot of organizations are facing capital concerns, the

brick and mortar, very clearly, that there's a lot of capital campaigns that may also then take away from the programming. It also doubles the work amount for staff. That's a real cause of burnout. There were some really successful models about how to build succession planning into your everyday life so that you are understanding the continuum that you are on as a staff member, as a colleague, so that you don't become territorial. You might be more open to sharing. All these things can contribute to a different type of workplace. And I think what we learned even in just offering a caring environment is that it may not feel natural to care for your colleagues right now. And that is heartbreaking to hear. Certainly, some of us have lived that and that's not a funding request. That is just the reality of maybe funders may need, like us should continue to be sensitive to the people that are writing these grants and the people that are coming to you. They're coming to you maybe not feeling generally cared for or valued.

Charlotte Burns: What if you could wave a magic wand? Obviously, resources is part of it. You can do some of that. What if you could fix it? What could you do? You’re thinking about this, I’m sure obviously. 

Karen Patterson: I think a lot about intuition and instinct and how I don't know that I would have even thought about the curatorial career had it not been for Ruth, who insisted on it being a primary responsibility of my job. I wish that we could value instinct and intuition as a structural decision-making tool and maybe move a little bit away from more bureaucratic processes for the sake of having a process. I don't know if that's a popular opinion, but I feel that our team especially, loves to give a hot take and loves to give ‘what ifs’ all the time, and it makes for a wonderful conversation and it makes you realize that things are possible and that the thing that's possible may not have been done before, but that we could do that. 

And so my dream maybe would be to all the wonderful people that I work in the art world, when I have conversations and thinking about my network of curators, where we travel together and you have that glass of wine after you see some shows and just like that gut talk about, “That was a great show. My gosh, that was so good. What'd you like?” like that kind of feeling, energy, about that passion for artists, that passion for art making and maybe not worrying about it going wrong, and I know that's a fairly big ask. Maybe I would say it in a different way. Maybe I would say we could help each other feel more experimental. We could help each other feeling like intuition might be enough here. And instinct might be all we're looking for. It brings a specificity, it brings a point of view. It brings something that you might not have known before. So my wish would be that we support more instinct and intuition. 

Generally speaking, that's where good ideas come from. I think about our pool. I think about how many of these organizations started as artists’ collectives or artists’ ideas. I think our percentage is, my gosh, at least 60 percent of our organizations started by an idea of artists who weren't getting the support where they needed it and started their own thing. And that's gut, that's instinct, and that's intuition, and that's perseverance, and saying that we can do this, and this current model isn't working, so let's do something else. The three of us, the four of us, the five of us. I would say the Ruth Arts pool is made up of a lot of those histories, and it fits so well with Ruth's history of not accepting the status quo, of saying, “If we did it this way, more people would feel excited, more people would feel inspired.” And it's not just about seeing art, it's about seeing what's possible. And I think access to that is really important and I wish that for everyone, that people could see more possibilities.

[Musical interlude]

Charlotte Burns: What if funding wasn't already focused on the status quo, which you've led me into here? The foundation calls itself Midwestern at heart, national in scope, but you're doing something slightly different as well in the way that you approach things. It's not necessarily going towards giving in an established realm, necessarily. And that's what's so interesting about it. Talk to me about that. You’re giving in a different way, you’re giving in different places, you’re giving in different scales. 

Karen Patterson: Yeah, we are able to learn about places through the way that we're giving and the places that artists have pointed us to. Had they all pointed us to New York and LA, it would have also gone that way. It just turns out that people are very interested in all the places across the country. If someone says, “Hey, I'm going to Baltimore, what should I do?” I typically would ask an artist to find out what I'm going to do. And so I think that's how things turned out and we weren't surprised. 

I think we also really wanted to be a part of that national conversation from a different vantage point. And so there are amazing funders in LA, amazing funders in New York, in Chicago, even. And so we just wanted to take advantage of our new role from a different perspective and offer a different perspective, even if to show that it's possible.

Charlotte Burns: That what’s possible? To be national?

Karen Patterson: To be national and not in LA and New York. To be national and be in small spaces. To be national and to be experimental. To be national and be specific. All those things seem very possible to us now. We are a national in scope, and I think we're very specific in the organizations that we're supporting in terms of their unique qualities and their programming.

Charlotte Burns: It's really interesting because that's what artists are seeking. 

Karen Patterson: Yeah. 

And then we can see trends. So the first year, we noticed a lot of residencies in smaller spaces or smaller towns. Bemis [Center for Contemporary Art residency], Headlands [Center for the Arts Artist in Residence (AIR) program], this is where artists discovered this place, through their residency and found community. And so we started to think about the support structures for how an artist lives, how an artist makes, and how an artist is remembered. That became the kind of general theme that we saw through that first year of Artist Choice. 

And then last year, we started to see coalitions and more collaboratives and collectives coming to be nominated. So then we also saw that in the water. Okay, now there's more collaboration, alliances that they're pointing us to. And so we start thinking about how do you offer support in that way too? And how do we mirror that ethos? 

So who knows what we're going to find out this year but it hasn't always been the same. And so we know this is a dynamic way of staying excited and staying in that learning place. 

Charlotte Burns: I love a trend. The journalist in me...

Karen Patterson: I know!

Charlotte Burns: …will never not love a trend. [Laughs]

I wanted to ask you about leadership. You said earlier there's this leadership crisis. How do you define that? We're discussing it too. We're hearing it on the show. I'm hearing it with people I talk to. How do you support leaders?

Karen Patterson: I think when I was a curator, I took for granted the natural community that comes from curators. We travel together, we see each other, we share ideas. And I think for me personally moving into a different role, I'm aware of how isolating leadership can be. You feel varying degrees of support, but not 100 percent support.

Everyone needs something from you and that can be isolating. So, I think the leadership crisis comes from that feeling of isolation and feeling like you're doing it on your own in a lot of ways. 

Charlotte Burns: Do you have other peer groups of leaders? 

Karen Patterson: I do now. Yeah, I do now and I rely heavily. My biggest peer group, of course, is my colleague and program director but I think it is a different way of traveling.

Charlotte Burns: What is the ‘what if’ that keeps you up at night? And what is the ‘what if’ that gets you out of bed in the morning?

Karen Patterson: “What if I got it wrong?” keeps me up at night. Yeah, what if it doesn't work? What if I'm not reaching the right people? What if this doesn't stay creative? What if this doesn't stay as exciting as it does right now? I don't think I've ever had a career that has been such a marriage of continuous learning and crippling self-doubt at the same time. [Laughs] 

And then there's also the very practical ‘what ifs.’ I want to make sure that the distribution of funds is very new to me. There's the IRS and there's trust documents and there's things that I really, you know, that we have to adhere to. And we do but those are new words for me. And I think about those, as I should, every night.

What gets me up in the morning is probably the polar opposite of that. What if we made a big difference? What if people saw themselves as valuable? What if people saw themselves as cared for? What if we help people give it a shot? What if this has a ripple effect?

Charlotte Burns: I think there's more than a ripple effect when it's that seismic a program. It's such a massive amount of funds. It's such a huge ambition of program. It has to be more than a ripple effect. It’s just much more enormous than that. 

Karen Patterson: You asked me at the beginning the ‘what if’ about the $16 million. Money is a tool that the US speaks and it is very effective. But there are so many other tools at our disposal, and so I think about the ripple effect of the funding, absolutely. But I think about the ripple effect of the ethos and the ethics in a more creative way, because I think about how people mostly remember Ruth, will eventually be her ethics and her ethos over the generations. And I think I will play a part in doing that but I think about the ripple effect of maybe the ethos of what we're doing. And of course the funding, but what if we could infuse a little bit of imagination and experimentation into this field?

Charlotte Burns: That's what I mean. I'm sure there are ripple effects, but I feel like it's a bit bigger than that too. When the programs are so ambitious, the scale of it. I feel a ripple is one pebble in a pond. This is lots of ponds and lots of pebbles and lots of stones and some big boulders so it feels like that's more than a ripple, just by the scale of the projects, even. With everything you discussed, with all of the artist projects, with all of the organizations, with all of the convenings, with the thought leadership, with the sites and specifics, with the future risk with…you know, that’s a lot of programs even if you’re talking about ethos. 

Karen Patterson: What a gift we've been given. What a gift to be able to do this. I truly won't know when to stop. It is such a gift and what do you do with a gift like this? You do it. You go all in. You go all in.

Charlotte Burns: It feels like such a profound thing to be in charge of.

Karen Patterson: It is. 

Charlotte Burns: You know, such generosity. Does it change you personally? 

Karen Patterson: Yes, absolutely. I am a different person than I was two years ago. I don't know that anyone that was close to me would ever accuse me of being patient, but I have time. I make time and I take deep breaths and I try to really feel, yeah, I don't even know how to answer that question. It is one of the most profound things that's ever happened to me in my life. And if that's the case, I'm approaching it as though this is one of the most profound things that ever happened in my life. I’m taking full advantage of it. And because of its model, that it is distribution and reciprocity, it gives more than I could ever imagine to me personally, but also to a country that needs it. I don't know. That's so cheesy, but yeah, I feel the sheer act of the first question of what does it feel like to, what if you could distribute $16 million, like what, my goodness. You would go for it. You would really go for it.

Charlotte Burns: Karen, what a great note to end on. I feel like I have to let you go because I feel like you have a lot to go for. [Laughs] 

Thank you so much for making the time. It's been such a pleasure to talk to you over the last couple of years as all of this been building up and I’m sure there will be so much to talk about over the coming years too.

Karen Patterson: Wow. You make it so easy, Charlotte. I really appreciate you. 

[Musical interlude]

Charlotte Burns: Really big thanks to Karen Patterson. If you enjoyed our chat, please listen to some of this season’s other brilliant guests including Hoor Al Qasimi, the president and director of Sharjah Art Foundation; Phillip Ihenacho, the director of the Museum of West African Art; and to Salome Asega, the artist and director of NEW INC in New York. All so worth a listen. They’re doing amazing things.

Next time on The Art World: What If…?!, a very special episode. I’m traveling all the way to Alabama to talk to the Equal Justice Initiative founder Bryan Stevenson. 

Bryan Stevenson: We created a narrative of racial difference instead. And that narrative of racial difference was like an infection. And I believe the infection has spread. And we've never treated that infection and the consequences of it are still with us today.

Charlotte Burns: I can’t wait for you to hear the show. It’s a very special one.

This podcast is brought to you by Art&, the editorial platform created by Schwartzman&. The executive producer is Allan Schwartzman, who co-hosts the show together with me, Charlotte Burns of Studio Burns, which produces the series. 
Follow the show on social media at @artand_media.