With grant money from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Artist Protection Fund aims to place threatened artists of any medium in to host organisations or universities where they can safely continue their work.

“ISIS isn’t only chopping up 2,000 year old sculptures from the Assyrian empire, they’re actually killing people who will be the artists of their societies”

“The more we learn about how threatened people in the arts are the more we should all be concerned because really the future is creativity, the future is the humanities that in some places are now very much threatened,” IIE President Allan Goodman told The PIE News. “ISIS isn’t only chopping up 2,000 year old sculptures from the Assyrian empire, they’re actually killing people who will be the artists of their societies. So it is a pressing issue.”

Similar to IIE’s Scholar Rescue Fund, which has provided fellowships to over 600 scholars from 53 countries, the organisation hopes to galvanise hosts to match fellowship donations through contributions that may include housing, studio space, art supplies, and other support from their networks.

Hosts could be university art education programmes and arts residencies, as well as arts centres, performing arts organisations and less traditional artistic communities. Artists from any medium including sculpture, music, performing arts and filmmaking, are eligible for the grant.

Speaking at the launch in Boston last week, Goodman said: “As in the case of persecuted scholars, threats against just one individual artist can have an immediate chilling effect on entire artistic communities. The Artist Protection Fund will connect artists to opportunities in a way that provides mutual benefit to both the artists and the arts organisations.

“Our goal is to build connections and skills that will help the artists to thrive after the fellowship is over and enrich the artistic communities that host them,” he said adding that universities themselves and their students stand to benefit through participation as well.

“By having an Artists Protection Fund where artists can go to a university, it’s a way of bringing to the university significant people in music, writing, performing arts, that a university on it’s own might not be able to find.”

Founded in 1919, IIE is involved in other programmes supporting the arts including Department of State’s Fulbright Program and International Visitors Leadership Program, IIE’s Scholar Rescue Fund and the Janet Hennessey Dilenschneider Scholar Rescue Award in the Arts, and the Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center Residency Programs.

The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has provided the initial planning grant for the programme as part of its mission to strengthen, promote, and, where necessary, defend the contributions of the humanities and the arts.