MacArthur "Genius" Grants Reach Too Few

by Joyce Marcel

And William James said "Geniuses are ferments; and when they come together, as they have done in certain lands at certain times, the whole population seems to share in the higher energy which they awaken." This is clearly true, and we all benefit from the results of the inspiration-plus-perspiration of geniuses, whether those results be immediately useful, like Edison's, or first theoretical like Albert Einstein's, or enduringly wise like George Elliot's.

Although we live in a world seemingly made and run by and for fools and idiots ("Buy low and sell high" -- well, duh!) we put a high price on genius. The problem is, we don't want to pay it.

Lately, we seem to be willing to let the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, who proudly announce they have assets of $4 billion, foot the bill for the whole country.

The MacArthur Foundation "genius" fellowships (the 1998 fellowships were just announced) give large amounts of money (from $220,000 to $375,000) plus -- and this may be even more important -- health insurance, to people who have demonstrated "exceptional creativity."

Perhaps because there are more of them each year, getting a "genius" grant adds about as much luster as a Nobel Prize to certain people's resumes. For example, last week, when I wrote a story about the dancer and choreographer Bill T. Jones, I mentioned prominently that he was the recipient of a 1994 MacArthur "genius" grant -- it was in the first line of his press biography.

This year's 29 recipients are a cattle rancher, a group of artists, the creator of the Internet, a not-for-profit attorney, an experimental astrophysicist, and a few writers, economists, scientists, and activists.

They all sound worthy. The money has no strings attached -- it's not given for a specific project, but to free the creator from the daily worries of earning a living so his/her entire mind can be entirely occupied with his/her creativity. And there are no grant applications; no one can apply. You get "nominated" by secret "talent scouts."

Very few people have been willing to come forward and criticize this process, not the least because it's a wonderful thing that the MacArthur Foundation is doing, but also because in our heart of hearts, we all secretly hope that one day we ourselves will be touched on the forehead by Tinkerbell's wand and become one of the anointed. For aging yuppies, the MacArthur grant is like having the agent of John Beresford Tipton ring at you doorbell -- remember the early television series "The Millionaire?" For younger people, it's probably closer to the Publishers Clearinghouse.

While I can't fault the MacArthur Foundation for what it does with its $4 billion, I am concerned with the magnitude of the people who receive the grants. After going down the list of 29 winners this year, I can't find more than a handful who aren't already gainfully employed. They are creative people who have already been published or produced, or received financial help from institutions and foundations, or are earning a good living in the private sector. That cattle rancher, for example, if he's not a vegetarian, certainly knows where his next meal is coming from. And you don't do astrophysics while starving in your garret.

In the early years of the MacArthur grants, the people who received the awards were truly struggling unknowns. When their names were announced, usually you'd never heard of any of them. They reminded me of the old joke: what's the difference between a jazz musician and a pizza? Answer: a pizza can feed a family of four.

This is a country which has turned its back on the arts almost entirely, where government is corrupt, music and television are proudly copycat, Broadway is seemingly run by Disney, four or five publishing houses and two large bookstore chains determine the whole of the country's literary catalog, where artists struggle to find the money to buy the materials to create their art, where dancers close their companies and go to work as nurses, where writers of great talent literally live in unheated rooms and struggle to pay their phone bills, where dedicated journalists cannot find jobs in bottom-line oriented newsrooms, and where many creative people dance at the end of the strings of multi-billion dollar corporations as "contractors," without health insurance or the assurance that they will have a next assignment.

So I worry about why the MacArthur Foundation chooses to endow "names," and worry more about the people just below those names, the ones not employed by universities, supported by state and federal grants, or working at high-powered jobs. I worry about the creativity that can be lost when someone -- like the MacArthur Foundation -- doesn't support people who might be one desperate and despairing moment away from giving up their creative endeavors to stock shelves in a supermarket in order to feed their families. People, in other words, to whom inspiration and perspiration come more easily than mortgage payments.

My suggestion to the MacArthur people is this: fund your geniuses at your customary high level. That's only $8,700,000 out of $4 billion. Then set up a second program and fund it at a much lower level, say $100,000 over five years plus health insurance, and send your talent scouts out once again.

Because for every Bill T. Jones who was famous when he got his grant, there's someone who isn't famous, but who might have something important to say, and who would be able to write his/her heart out for the security of only $20,000 a year.