Elizabeth Alexander, a poet, scholar, and memoirist, has been tapped to lead the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the nation’s pre-eminent humanities grant maker. When she starts in mid-March, Alexander will be the first woman, and the first black woman, to serve as president of the foundation.
Alexander, 55, will succeed Earl Lewis, who led the foundation for five years. In December, Lewis announced plans to start the Center for Social Solutions, an institute that will research race and diversity, the future of work, and the availability of water.
In 2016, the foundation’s endowment fueled more than $298 million in grants for college scholarship programs, academic departments, libraries, museums and archives, international higher education, and environmental projects. Nearly half of Mellon’s gifts support universities and the arts.
Alexander said she doesn’t envision making any immediate changes to Mellon’s grant-making strategy. But arts and humanities philanthropy can spur “profound systems change” when done right, she stressed in an interview.
“What voices haven’t we heard? What brilliance has been marginalized or neglected?” she asked. “Once that’s been identified, we’re sharing it. That’s a social-justice orientation.”
Pulitzer Finalist
Alexander will continue to serve as a humanities professor at Columbia University until the end of the semester. She brings a long list of philanthropy and academic bona fides to her role at Mellon.
She serves on the Pulitzer Prize board, and her memoir Light of the World was a New York Times bestseller and Pulitzer finalist. She directed arts and culture programs at the Ford Foundation and chaired the African-American studies program at Yale University. Most recently, she co-directed the Art for Justice Fund, a collaboration of the Ford Foundation, philanthropist Agnes Gund, and others.
Nine years ago, when she recited her poem “Praise Song for the Day” at Barack Obama’s first inauguration, Alexander delivered a hopeful message:
In today’s sharp sparkle, this winter air,
any thing can be made, any sentence begun.
On the brink, on the brim, on the cusp,
praise song for walking forward in that light.
‘Under Siege’
Today Alexander sounds more grim. She said colleges and universities are “under siege,” citing statistics compiled by the Pew Research Center in July showing that 58 percent of Republicans felt higher education was having a negative impact on the country.
“The value of free expression, of arts and culture, is not something that’s always shouted from the rooftops right now,” she said.
Alexander’s ascension to the top job at Mellon, which has $6.3 billion in assets, making it one of the nation’s 15 largest foundations, comes at a time when more women and African-Americans have taken leadership roles at some of the country’s biggest institutional philanthropies.
A Council on Foundations survey taken last year found that minorities served as chief executives of 38 percent of foundations with more than 50 full-time workers.
However, among grant makers of any size, only 11 percent of foundation chiefs identified as a minority.
Alexander said she’s a “door-opener, and there are a lot of doors still to be opened.”
She also takes the steering wheel at a time when some progressive foundation leaders have become more vocal advocates of their priorities, including immigration and climate change, as those issues have come under pressure from the policies of the Trump administration.
Historically, Mellon has kept a relatively low profile. Alexander said under her leadership that will change; the foundation’s board picked her knowing she has a lot to say.
“Seeking publicity for its own sake is tacky,” she said. “I understand the contemplative space” and the need for foundations to sometimes take their time and work quietly.
“That said,” she added, “I am a writer. I use my voice in a public way. I share my work, and that is a tool I think I can use to advance the work of the foundation.”
Networking for Dollars
Alexander also called herself a “network and partnership maker” who loves to bring people together. For instance, she worked with the philanthropist and art collector Agnes Gund, who gave $100 million from an art sale to create the Art for Justice Fund, to attract other high-dollar art collectors to the cause. In November, the fund announced $22 million in grants to support changes in the criminal-justice system.
At Mellon, Alexander said she’d like to continue to connect high-net-worth donors to causes identified by the foundation.
Recent big gifts to the arts and humanities suggest there may be opportunities. In January, investor William Miller III gave $75 million to the Johns Hopkins University philosophy department, saying the mental habits he developed in the humanities helped him succeed as a financial speculator.
Alexander shares that love for mental vigor, and she hopes to bring a “teacherly mode” to Mellon, in which the foundation puts forward the best ideas.
“I value excellence and absolutely brilliant art that has the magic to make us feel something,” she said. “And absolutely shimmering, sharp thinking and ideas. That’s the starting point, the absolute rigor and sharpness of the idea.”
