Ceremony at MacColl Studio for Electronic Music at Brown on Friday, June 25, 3 p.m., will inaugurate first year’s awards

Robert Johnson worked with The Rhode Island Foundation for most of the nine years between his wife’s death in 1990 and his own in 1999 to fashion a lasting legacy for Rhode Island’s artists.

That legacy has now been realized, as Johnson’s $1.2 million trust has come to the Foundation to create artists fellowships for Rhode Island composers, writers, and visual artists. The resulting fellowships will be among the largest offered in the United States, according to the Foundation.

At a ceremony at the MacColl Studio for Electronic Music at Brown University on Friday, June 25 at 3 p.m., the Foundation will announce an October 1 deadline to apply for the first three no-strings-attached $25,000 fellowships in music composition. Fellowships to the other two disciplines will follow in succeeding years.

“Mr. Johnson had several goals when he first came to the Foundation,” noted Foundation Senior Vice President Carol Golden, who helped him design his fellowships over the last several years.

“He wanted to provide for family members during their lifetimes, which he did by establishing trusts that ultimately came to the Foundation upon their deaths. He wanted to honor his wife’s interests in music and creative writing and his own passion for the visual arts. And he wanted to make a difference for Rhode Island artists.”

Another trust worth $379,000 came to the Foundation and the resulting endowment now supports six of the couple’s favorite charities.

Johnson was born in Providence and lived there and in Little Compton all his life. During his career, he invented a “damascene” process that joined gold, copper, and bronze in metalwork. He was a design director for Reed and Barton silversmiths. When he retired, he bought the Mill House Studio in Tiverton and devoted the remainder of his artistic life to painting and metal design.

His wife, Margaret MacColl Johnson, came from the distinguished MacColl family, which had its American beginnings in the nation’s textile industry, specifically Lorraine Manufacturing in Pawtucket. A public relations expert with a second career in academia, Mrs. Johnson was a key supporter of the MacColl Studio at Brown, which was named for her father.

In 1973, she sponsored the 19 Mile Festival, a two-week show of contemporary music at Brown. At age 70, she earned a degree in creative writing from Roger Williams College.

Fellowships will be “a remarkable opportunity” for outstanding artists

“The MacColl Johnson Fellowships should be a remarkable opportunity for Rhode Island artists,” states Claude Elliott, an arts administrator and program officer at The Rhode Island Foundation. “Armed with this kind of support, we hope that they will be able to focus more of their time on the creative process and to develop professionally.”

Elliott said he expects the competition for the fellowships to be “stiff.”

“We’ll utilize an out-of-state expert panel who will be looking for the artist’s rigorous dedication and commitment to his or her artform, consistency of their effort, and, obviously, significant artistic merit.” Students will not be considered, he added. Fellows must be Rhode Island residents.  

The MacColl Johnson Fellowship complements several other endowments and arts grants at The Rhode Island Foundation, Golden pointed out, a sample of which includes:

• the $1.6 million Antonio Cirino Fund, which  provides scholarships to graduate school
  for would-be art teachers,
• the Bach Organ Scholarship Fund for keyboard students,
• the Fifth Ward Memorial Fund which provides income to the Boys and Girls Club of Newport for musical activities,
• the Jamestown Fund for the Performing Arts,
• the $1.2 million Rhode Island Arts Fund from which the Foundation makes grants to small and minority-run arts organizations,
• the New Works grantmaking program which provides support for Rhode Island artists to create and exhibit new works of art,
• the Trinity Repertory Company endowments, and
• several ‘donor advised’ funds in which the living donor concentrates his or her recommendations for grants in the arts community.