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In January, The New Foundation Seattle announced both the creation of its 100K prize—an award of $100,000 given to a distinguished U.S. woman artist—and its first recipient, New York artist and social activist Martha Rosler. In conjunction with the award, Seattle would be treated to Housing is a Human Right, a year-long series of exhibitions and events that would both showcase her work and, together with local arts and social organizations, seek to act upon her legacy of engaging homelessness and urban displacement.

I wrote about this philanthropic act and the resulting programming in the April issue of Seattle Magazine.

In light of this recent announcement and the launch of the show in February, most Seattleites familiar with the four-year-old Foundation and its objectives were shocked on March 30 to learn that Founder Shari Behnke would be shutting down the headquarters and gallery space in Pioneer Square at the end of May and laying off its staff of four.

No one was more surprised than the Foundation staff themselves, who learned of the decision through the email press release sent from the Foundation’s newly hired PR firm.

Behnke, who, along with her family, has been a leading arts philanthropist in Seattle, cited an illness in her family as the reason for shutting down the foundation in its current form. The staff—Foundation director Yoko Ott, associate director Jessica Powers, programs manager Ingrid Langston, and programs intern Coley Mixan—found themselves unemployed while Seattle’s artists and curators, many of whom have been the recipients of Behnke’s largess, were left uncertain about the future of the Foundation.

This whole situation—an arts patron dealing with the illness of a family member, a team of highly esteemed arts activists suddenly out of work, and the potential loss of a crucial and well-targeted source of funding for the arts in Seattle—is very sad.

Although the second of the three-part Rosler exhibition at the Foundation will close along with their offices (the second and third shows are no longer scheduled), much of the rest of the programming with partnering organizations, including the current show at the Seattle Art Museum, is still on.

Last year I worked in a very limited capacity for the Foundation, scoring artist’s grant applications and recommending funding amounts. Looking back at the situation now, the Foundation—whose sole purpose was advocacy of the arts in Seattle—seems almost too good to be true. I have known Ott and Powers for a number of years and I can think of no people better suited for running such an organization. Langston had just moved to Seattle from New York City at the time of her discharge, where she had worked at the Museum of Modern Art. Mixan, who I met at the University of Washington School of Art, was the star among last year’s graduates of the MFA program.

Be sure to visit the current Martha Rosler exhibit, If You Lived Here Still…, at the New Foundation offices before the end of May. We’ll keep you posted on any future developments.

Updated: This article was edited on April 14 to reflect the correct last name for Ingrid Langston. Also, the show currently at the Foundation is the second, not the first of the series.