Mellon Foundation: Too Insular, Too Rich, Too Dogmatic

A couple of weeks ago, I saw The Passions of Paul Mellon: Horses, Art, and Philanthropy, a very good exhibition at the Museum of Racing in Saratoga. It hit me there that I hadn’t written about the Mellon Foundation in a while. With an $8 billion pot of cash, Mellon is one of the biggest culture foundations in America and the world.

It was established in 1969 “to strengthen, promote, and defend the arts and humanities as essential to democratic societies.” Paul Mellon and his sister, Ailsa Mellon Bruce, formed it by consolidating their two foundations. Mellon is named for their father, Andrew Mellon, the titan whom Warren Harding called “the financier of the universe.”