$53,000 to 112 artists

This is the clearest demonstration in the archive of the one thing a local arts agency can do that nobody else is positioned to do: move money to artists quickly, in a named emergency, because it already knows who they are.

In total the Council awarded $53,000 in Emergency Artist Relief Grants to 112 local artists affected by the Covid-19 pandemic. It came from two sources and a good many individual donors.

The Mitchell Wolfson Family Foundation created the Audubon House Artist Fund specifically to help local artists in need, and through it the Council awarded $45,500 to 97 artists across Monroe County.

The rest is the part worth pausing on. Emma Starr created a project called Under One Roof, in which local artists donated the proceeds from their own artwork to help other artists. That raised over $7,400, which went to 16 more artists.

The artists who paid for it

The release ends by thanking them by name, and the list is the point of the piece: Rebecca Bennett, Rhonda Bristol, Bree Ann Buckley, Mary Jean Connors, Susann D’Antonio, Sarah Plaia Davidson, Michel Delgado, Margo Ellis, Annamarie Giordano, Eric Grahl, Karen Greenfield, Helen Harrison and Michelle Gilley, Mark Hedden, Elio Hinds, Pam Hobbs, Adam Russell, Vivien Segel, Reen Stanhouse, Karen Wray, Cindy Wynn, Lothar Speer and R.M. Walter.

Two names on that list connect it to the rest of this page. Reen Stanhouse is the metalsmith who finished the Freeman Justice Center elevator doors twelve years earlier. Mark Hedden serves on the Council’s board today.

Source News release, Florida Keys Council of the Arts, September 1, 2020