Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Funds First-Ever Center for Empathy and the Visual Arts
The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has awarded the Minneapolis Institute of Art, or MIA, a $750,000 grant, to fund a five-year project to build empathy in order to affect positive social change.
MIA will launch the first-ever Center for Empathy and the Visual Arts within an art museum. The institution will collaborate with scholars, philosophers, artists, and colleagues at other museums to explore “best practices to foster compassion and enhance related emotional skills.”
Commenting on the initiative, director Kaywin Feldman said, “A visitor to our museum has the opportunity to experience works of art made over the course of some five thousand years, from every corner of the globe. One of the most meaningful aspects of this encounter is the awareness it can awaken of a common humanity—an immediate sense of connection between the viewer and someone who may have lived in a very different time and place. Thanks to the Mellon Foundation, we’re proud to take the lead with partners across the country, in studying how to spark and nurture empathy through the visual arts, so that MIA and all art museums can contribute even more toward building a just and harmonious society.” ...