 Thanks Alexis. Well good afternoon everyone. It's great to have you all here at the Ford Foundation and for me this is a moment I've been waiting for this year where we talk about the art of change and when we talk about movements and when I look around this room it's remarkable. I mean of course I'm biased because I know many of you but I'm also absolutely astonished at what has happened in the field of the arts since the Ford Foundation started in the 1960s doing some pioneering work in the arts that really in many ways helped to transform how we think about art and culture in America and in the world and I don't mean to be hubristic in saying that because I don't think that everything that we did we got right and so there were some things that we learned that I hope in this next iteration of Ford work we incorporate when we look back and I look back in our archives and I see what a convening looked like the convening with all white people let's just start there it was quite monochromatic it was very very focused on the classics on the three things the Ford Foundation cared most about symphony orchestras ballet and regional theater those were the areas that we felt were important in the early 1960s because the context in the early 1960s was to beat the Russians and to beat the Europeans and so when we think about our biggest investment in dance during this period it was in the school of American ballet because we had become convinced that by having balancing we've gotten our Russian to come and he gave us this idea that in order to beat the boy show we needed to do what the Russians did and that was to build a great school that would train and create a pipeline for great ballerinas and dancers who would show those Russians that we Americans can beat them at their own game and when you look across all of our investments during this period that was the context when you look and see the amount of money we spent to send Alvin Ailey and dance theater of Harlem in the 1960s out into the world it was in part a response to the fact that the world was looking at America during those civil rights years and saying look is what look at what is happening to black people in America they are being treated horribly in a democracy that says it's the greatest democracy in the world so our response was to send out culture from Harlem from Alvin Ailey to say oh no what you're seeing in those marches is only one part of America there's this thing called culture that we have that's unique in America where we actually have dance companies that are populated by African Americans and and so we're not all that bad so when I think about what's happening today and I look around this room it truly is a transformational moment and on many occasions like this artists will complain about how difficult it is and how hard it is to do the work that you do the courageous work that you do but I get energized because I see the world before me and I see the possibilities for true transformation not just because this room is populated with artists as it was 50 years ago but today we have people from all disciplines not just artistic disciplines but we have people who are doing organizing like I did we have people who are working on the front lines of social change today in a way coming together with artists and because technology makes possible so much more than it did then to truly do transformational work so I am thrilled about the potential for this experience and this occasion to be transformational for for Ford most certainly but more importantly for the world but I have to be parochial and say that we at Ford have to change some of our practice when I became president and I thought about our practice I start where most presidents start I started with my own board and what I discovered was that the great progressive Ford foundation that loves arts and culture had actually never had an artist on its board and I found that quite quite troubling and so we talked about the need to bring an artist and hopefully more than one artist ultimately on to our board and I was thrilled that in fact the first trustee we elected after I became president was was Lotus Lopez and I think she brings such a sensibility to the board table to our processes and to the experience making it richer and more interesting and more creative and ultimately I think more successful a board and we have to think at Ford about all of our practice that both inhibits and unleashes the potential that I think we all aspire to achieve the other thing I want to say is you have heard me and you many of you I hope have read what I've written more recently about what we at Ford see as I think the seminal issue of our time and that is inequality something that wasn't in in any way a meaningful part of conversation at Ford in the 1960s because we in fact had a far more equal and in many ways oddly a more just world and as a foundation we're engaging at a time of expansion of our ideas and the possibility for greater fairness and justice and the challenge today is that inequality makes it very hard for us to think in expansive ways because what inequality does is drive us away from each other because we individually and in our communities feel more vulnerable less secure and less willing understandably to then say let's engage in solving collective problems it's very hard to engage in solving collective problems when you've got a hundred thousand dollars of student debt and you're trying to think about how you're going to pay that working a job if you're lucky paying twenty dollars an hour and so we have to deal with this issue of inequality in our society and another byproduct of inequality is that there are fewer voices and fewer institutions willing to step up and hold the mirror up to America and to society and say is this the country is this the world that we want because those institutions feel more vulnerable and I often tell the story of the university president who spoke in a very complimentary way about a speech I had given on the subject of inequality and I responded by saying well there was a time when university presidents spoke up about issues that were important around justice and fairness in our society and this university president said we can't do that anymore because we've all got capital campaigns to run and I can't afford to offend my board because I've got to raise a lot of money from some of the very people who have benefited from this system that is producing more inequality so it reminds me of just how pernicious and insidious inequality can be in a democracy where we depend on institutions and people to stand up and demand that we fulfill our obligations to each other and to this country fulfill its obligations to its citizens that's why artists are so important because artists hold the mirror up in the boldest most courageous and daring ways and really make demands which is why artists are often marginalized and not liked because artists make us uncomfortable artists interrogate us artists produce things that we really don't want to look at because artists demand truth they demand reflection and they demand of a society collectively that that society really look within itself and so the work that we want to do is to support artists to do that kind of work and we see this convening as a very important part of informing how we can support our institutions and artists to be able to do the work they do best now we won't be able to fulfill all the need that is out there of course but we do hope to be able to learn from for example this amazing group of artist fellows that we have and I'm very happy to see some of you in the audience today and we hope for meetings like this and an additional set of meetings we'll be hosting for the rest of this year to hone from these gatherings a set of things around which we can build programming and grant making recognizing that at the center of it will be artists we live in a time when artists are both fetishized and marginalized and it is so interesting to live in a time when when we commodify artistic production in a way that that is simply would have been unthinkable 50 years ago at a Ford Foundation convening and at the same time we in an era around the world where civil society is being thwarted and we know the efforts to contain and constrain voice and free expression that artists are being marginalized so we have these these this dialectic that is confounding and confusing and frustrating where some artists as I said paintings are being sold for eight ten million dollars of living artists I recently saw a painting of an amazing african-american artist who we know and love Kerry May eight million dollars eight million dollars at Phillips for a piece of his work and I thought this is amazing a black man in America able to get eight million dollars at auction at the same and so I thought you go brother that's that's great and at the same time I thought about the millions of black men who are marginalized and who can't even get a minimum wage job because they have had some engagement in the criminal justice system and and so we have these these paradoxes and these powerful profound inequalities that we live with every day and have to reconcile and I think the work that we do here at Ford and I'm so lucky that we have Hillary leading this work and leading our efforts in in the arts and free expression more broadly that's the work that we do and so I just wanted to to thank you and tell you it's humbling for me I feel so inadequate in so many ways when I come into a room with people like all of you to to do the work that we do here but you inspire us you motivate me personally and I'm just deeply profoundly grateful for the opportunity to work with many of you and and to have you here and hopefully that have you here again soon so thank you all very very much so we it's it's it's been a really long day and I feel like we've had a lot of amazing and deep conversation and one of the things Darren that's been the most striking about these people is that it hit there's been almost no talk about what foundations do and can do which is kind of amazing given the world that we live in and the scarcity of resource for the kind of work but we did promise in the morning that if you had questions about the foundation and Darren's letter from last week we'd be happy to take them we're also totally happy not to because there's a bar out there and a lot of conversation with each other to have but let's just take a minute if people have any questions that they'd like for me or for Darren before we had to celebrate each other and drink so I read the letter and I read that wonderful article on philanthropy today so um so yeah incredibly courageous what you're doing um such an influential foundation um and I think I work at the Oakland Museum of California and so so uh we we are keenly paying attention to what you're doing and the vision you're having so so basically uh the the curiosity we have is sort of the timeline for for feedback uh digestion and then some evolution I know it's not going to be one step but but I'm curious whether there's a sort of a watershed moment that you're aiming for well I think that we this process as we had a meeting recently and with with the staff and one of the program officers stood up and said you know this process is going too fast for me but I think it's going too slow for our grantees and um and and we know actually who we're here to serve and so it's going too slow so um we are keen to conclude this phase of our work is you I mean our view about strategy and my view about strategies strategies never finished um it's it's an iterative um organic process um and but we are I think at a critical moment where we're doing um the foundational work to set the table around which we will then make make grants so our timeline is by the time we get to our October board meeting we aspire to have completed a series of a set of work to articulate a set of what we're calling lines of work in each area there will be two or three lines of work around which grant making will be done and in and Hillary is leading the work um in in on art and culture and the goal is ideally to have some lines of work articulated by then um a key I think marker in this is that we are hiring a director for the art and culture program um we were sorry to see Roberta uno leave us a few months ago uh but but we are um thinking now about and Hillary is in the process of of recruiting and talking to candidates and so hopefully Hillary will have something to announce on that front at some point this fall I hope and and that will be a key moment too because so I guess the bottom line is we want to start 2016 out of the blocks um with a new round of grant making and um some of that may be more exploratory and may be um uh more sort of um trying to understand if a particular area of grant of grant making has potential and so not making a big commitment potentially but and in other areas making a big commitment um so that's that's how we're seeing it play out thank well and I mean you know it's it's great to hear but it's also I've been a grantee and it's also frustrating because what as I say to my colleague what most grantees want to know and not just grant but most is you know give us the guidelines and tell us whether we're in or out I mean it's not you know we love your wonderful conceptual thinking and we love that you have all these papers and we love that you've you know had a really participatory process but can you just tell us whether we have an opportunity to get funding um that's what I always wanted to know when I was a grantee um yes that was excited about it and what are you most anxious about with this pivot I think what I am most excited about broadly is one really driving the inequality narrative um in philanthropy and and you know in a way we have been working on the issue of inequality and social mobility at Ford for a long time and so in some ways um as Gail Christopher knows you know it's a it's almost frustrating I mean you know in the last 18 months everybody's talking about inequality and so um and that's good and potentially not good because the fact that it I mean it's something that I mean in foundations you hope that that if you are working on on a trend or working on some analysis that you hope gets in the water so to speak and becomes part of the public discourse and framing of a problem that's what you hope happens the downside of that is that that very idea can be a can be appropriated diluted and and misappropriated and and um and in many ways um it becomes less important because it becomes used so much and so um what we have to make sure is that that we here drive what we really mean by inequality which isn't just income inequality so what I get anxious about is that is that people see inequality only through the lens of income which is very important but there are so many other ways in which inequality is manifesting in our system starting with our criminal justice system I mean just washing through our entire system that an an income is is an important uh a feature of of a particular kind of inequality in the United States but but we've got to look at it in a in a through a broader prism um so that's one thing that I I'm I'm excited about um also a little anxious um I'm very excited about the idea of working with artists I um have a particular um appreciation affection and admiration for artists because I think well I could never be an artist I mean not only do I not have the talent I don't think I have the courage I mean I think it really does um take a certain kind of person to to do what artists do um and and I and so those artists who do the things that I just said the best artists do um a few minutes ago um often live life at the margins um often find themselves being a scorn uh a ridicule or or challenged in in really profound and deep ways and so I want to support those people and I want to validate and valorize them and what they do in in a society like ours and how vital they are to this democracy to making it work better and so I'm hopeful that we'll figure out a way to be able to do that in a in a powerful way great thank you all very very much let's have a drink just uh before and as we go to to add a little bit of texture to what Darren just said about timing just so you all really get the timing because of the two things that Darren uh described one is the process we're in to try to think about programming and the fact that we're hiring a leader the the work the decisions that we make about the programming for the arts will lag other decisions that we make because they have to so um it may be optimistic that we would have a lot in town by like the basic question you have will you fund me we may not be able to answer as clearly in October as we will be able to answer in December but so I just uh just for you all to uh to hear and to know that and then I just want to do a shout out to two really critical colleagues who are here Kara Murtis who many many many of you know who uh leads our just films work but also is a deep and profound leader on the culture work that we're doing here and Margaret Morton who is raise her hand Margaret uh who is leading our our arts grant making through the end of the year and we are so grateful to have her here so um we these kinds of conversations this is a rhythm you all are in a sense part of our design team as we think about what matters and what what Ford can do that can be most powerful as we move forward so we want to keep those conversations open we're so grateful to all of you for the day that we spent here together and we really look forward to continuing this kind of engagement um through the rest of the year and we will you will know as soon as we know anything consequential uh for all this work so thank you