Genius

Every year at this time, I look forward to seeing the new batch of MacArthur Genius Grants that are awarded. If you are unfamiliar with these, it is a grant program that each year picks out innovators from across a variety of fields (art, music, science, historians, etc.) and awards these twenty or so with $500,000 over five years. Often this money goes to individuals who could really use it, freeing them up to pursue their craft and push forward in new ways with whatever it is they are working on. It's always an eclectic group, and I think that is why I so enjoy reading each bio, finding out about creative ways others are attempting to enrich our lives. Some of my favorites from this years group are Whitfield Lovell, a painter and installation artist from New York, who creates charcoal portraits honoring the everyday lives of African-Americans and places these portraits in the context of everyday objects- frying pans, bed frames, etc. Another was Deborah Biel, a graduate of Harvard's Grad School of Education, who started the Posse Foundation an organization that identifies promising youth from urban areas, and puts them in small groups, 'posses', to pre-train them for the college they and their other posse members are destined for.