Alexander, Elizabeth (1962- )

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    Ford and Mellon Foundations Name 2024 Disability Futures Fellows

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    The 20 recipients, including a Broadway composer, a Marvel video game voice actress and a three-time Pushcart Prize-nominated poet, are the initiative’s final cohort.The Ford and Andrew W. Mellon Foundations on Wednesday named the 2024 Disability Futures Fellows — the latest class of disabled writers, filmmakers, musicians and other creative artists who will receive unrestricted $50,000 awards.This year’s recipients include Gaelynn Lea, a folk artist and disability rights activist; Natasha Ofili, an actress and writer who in 2020 became one of the first Black deaf actors to portray a video game character — Hailey Cooper — in Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales; Warren Snipe, a.k.a. Wawa, a deaf rapper and actor who performed in sign language at the 2022 Super Bowl; and Kay Ulanday Barrett, a three-time Pushcart Prize-nominated poet and essayist whose work focuses on queer, transgender people of color.Lea said she almost missed an email telling her she got the award. “Because the email said, ‘We’re excited to offer you $50,000,’ it went to my spam,” Lea, 40, said in an interview. (She later received a follow-up email.)“It’s very validating that I’m doing this stuff I really care about, and now it’s being recognized,” added Lea, who won NPR Music’s Tiny Desk Contest in 2016, and composed and performed original music for a Broadway production of “Macbeth” starring Daniel Craig and Ruth Negga. Lea plans to use the award to fund the writing of a memoir to be published next year.The initiative, which is administered by United States Artists, named its inaugural class of fellows in 2020, with the goal of increasing the visibility of disabled artists and elevating their voices. (About one in four adults in the United States has a disability, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.) The second class was announced in 2022, and this is the last cohort in the program. The fellowship supports people at all stages of their careers.Elizabeth Alexander, the president of the Mellon Foundation, said in a statement that the program reflected the foundation’s support of the “work, experiences and visions of disabled artists — both in their individual practices and in the collective power they wield in the arts at large.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Television

      Late Night Gets Why Putin’s Advisers Keep Him in the Dark

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      “Of course they’re afraid to be honest,” Stephen Colbert said. “No matter what you say to a psychotic boss, you lose.”Welcome to Best of Late Night, a rundown of the previous night’s highlights that lets you sleep — and lets us get paid to watch comedy. Here are the 50 best movies on Netflix right now.Putin’s LossRussian troops are reportedly afraid to let Vladimir Putin know just how poorly the war in Ukraine is going.“Of course they’re afraid to be honest. No matter what you say to a psychotic boss, you lose,” Stephen Colbert said.“There are a lot of reasons it’s going so terribly. The Russian troops, they have no clear purpose, the troops are running out of food, and it turns out they have really bad technology. For instance, while most modern military radios are impossible to intercept, many Russians forces are communicating on unencrypted high frequency channels that allow anyone with a ham radio to eavesdrop. To which Russian soldiers said, ‘A radio made of ham? Can I have one? I’m so hungry!’” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Now, Russia’s walkie-talkies are being bombarded with heavy metal music from Ukrainian operators. OK, that’s not bad, heavy metal, but if Ukraine really wants to mess with Russian soldiers, they should flood their walkie-talkies with an unbearably long podcast.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“But Vladimir Putin may not be aware of how bad his invasion is going because new intelligence suggests his advisers misinformed him on Ukraine. Well, Putin’s clearly a victim of his own pro-Russia propaganda. He doesn’t even know that Russia lost ‘Rocky IV.’” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Intelligence officials reportedly believe that Russian president Vladimir Putin has only recently learned how poorly the invasion of Ukraine has been going and is angry with his military advisers. And you can tell he’s upset, because now the table is even longer.” — SETH MEYERSThe Punchiest Punchlines (Walking It Back Edition)“And Republican congressman Madison Cawthorn is now taking back the comments he made about fellow lawmakers inviting him to orgies and doing cocaine in his presence. In a meeting with House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, Cawthorn admitted his comments were ‘exaggerated.’ He talked a big game about cocaine and orgies, but in reality, it was just Claritin, and an over-the-pants handy.” — JAMES CORDEN“First he said on a podcast that they did cocaine in front of him; now he says he thinks he may have seen a staffer in a parking garage from 100 yards away. How deluded are you to be in a parking garage, seeing someone lean over to pick up their keys and thinking, ‘Uh oh, looks like another cocaine orgy’?”— JAMES CORDEN“That was obviously a very bizarre and shocking allegation, and it pissed off Cawthorn’s G.O.P. colleagues because he seemed to be accusing his fellow Republicans of being the sex-crazed drug addicts. And by the way, let me just state for the record, I don’t care — have your orgies. You’re consenting adults. If you want to roll out a tarp in a Holiday Inn conference room and go to town on each other, be my guest.” — SETH MEYERS“Dude, when you’re trying to tamp down orgy rumors, don’t say ‘members,’ just say people — we know who you mean.” — SETH MEYERS“He sounds like me in high school trying to convince my mom and dad that everyone at the party was drinking except me: ‘No, I just had — I just had a Sprite because I didn’t like the taste of liquor.’” — JAMES CORDENThe Bits Worth WatchingSamuel L. Jackson talked about some of his iconic roles on Thursday night’s “Desus & Mero.”Also, Check This Out Elizabeth Alexander’s book of essays is accompanied by artwork, including Dawoud Bey’s “Martina and Rhonda, Chicago, Ill.,” 1993).Dawoud Bey. Courtesy: Sean Kelly, New York.Elizabeth Alexander’s new book, “The Trayvon Generation,” traces the influences of racism and violence on American culture today. More

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      in Music

      New York Artists in Need Can Apply for $1,000 a Month

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      A $125 million program offering guaranteed income to 2,400 artists across New York State who can demonstrate financial need is now accepting applications.The offers promise to appeal to struggling artists. One would provide $1,000 a month for 18 months, no strings attached, to make it easier to spend time on creative work. The other is for a $65,000-a-year job with a community-based organization or a municipality.Artists who live in New York State and can demonstrate financial need are being invited to apply for either beginning Monday as part of a new $125 million initiative called Creatives Rebuild New York that is being supported by several major foundations.The new initiative — which will provide monthly stipends to 2,400 New York artists, and jobs to another 300 — is the latest in a series of efforts around the country to give guaranteed income to artists. Programs are already underway in San Francisco, St. Paul, Minn., and elsewhere. The idea gained support during the pandemic, when live performances ground to a halt, galleries were closed, art fairs were canceled, and many art and music lessons were paused, leaving artists to suffer some of the worst job losses in the nation.“There are guaranteed income programs that have been launching across the country, many of them pilots to understand if this work has been working,” Sarah Calderon, the executive director of the program said in an interview. “Creatives Rebuild New York has seen that data and really believes that it does work.”The intention, Calderon said, is not just to generate guaranteed income for artists, but to make sure that any broader guaranteed income programs that are being considered take into account the needs of artists and the importance and value of their work.The program is supported with $115 million from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, $5 million from the Stavros Niarchos Foundation and $5 million from the Ford Foundation. Funds for the program are overseen by the Tides Center.Who can apply? The program’s definition of an artist is fairly broad, describing it as “someone who regularly engages in artistic or cultural practice” to express themselves, pass on traditional knowledge, offer cultural resources to their communities or work with communities toward social impacts. Disciplines that fall within its definition include crafts, dance, design, film, literary arts, media arts, music, oral tradition, social practice, theater, performance art, traditional arts, visual arts and interdisciplinary arts.Elizabeth Alexander, the president of the Mellon Foundation, said that the idea stemmed from her work on a state panel, the Reimagine New York Commission, which brought together people from a wide array of fields to consider how the state should rebuild from the pandemic and become more equitable.“As we continue to envision and work towards our post-pandemic reality,” she said in a statement, “it’s critical that we not overlook the artist workers whose labor is an essential part of our economy and whose continued work sustains us.”Emil J. Kang, who directs the Mellon Foundation’s program for arts and culture, noted that many artists have to take on multiple jobs to make ends meet. With these programs, he said, hopefully they could devote more time to their art.“We need to actually value the hours and the labor that artists have put into their work that extends beyond what we see on these stages and gallery walls,” Kang said in an interview. “We need to understand that there is labor that goes into all these things that ultimately the public sees.”The program, which will accept applications through March 25, will attempt to reach communities that are historically underserved by philanthropy. The application process will include accommodations for non-English speakers, people with disabilities and those without internet access.“This isn’t just about the pandemic,” said Calderon, who added that the goal was to find new, better ways to support artists.“Often funding is merit-based, often funding involves rather burdensome processes to get the funds,” she said. “And often there’s not enough to go around.” More