In a guest opinion piece for Inside Philanthropy, Doris Duke Charitable Foundation Program Director for the Arts Maurine Knighton shared lessons from the pandemic on the power of providing unrestricted funding to performing artists and noted the opportunity for foundations to rethink their strategies for supporting the arts by putting artists and their needs at the center of their grantmaking.
Knighton writes: "We support unrestricted giving because it jumpstarts creativity by better supporting artists. Unlike other industries, the creative sector does not lend itself to tidy, measurable outcomes. Artists create art organically—no rubric or list of metrics can adequately measure these contributions to society. When funding creative undertakings, we need to afford more flexibility to allow their innovation and originality to unfold. We trust that when artists are cared for and valued, great art will follow."