The Milwaukee-based Ruth Foundation of the Arts, established with a $440 million endowment from late bathroom fixture heiress Ruth DeYoung Kohler II, announced its attendance with an initial $1.25 million. dollars in unrestricted grants to seventy-eight unsuspecting American arts organizations. The winners, who each received $10,000, $20,000 or $50,000, were chosen by a diverse panel of nearly fifty artists from across the country representing a variety of practices and career stages. Since the grants are invitation-only, many grantees were shocked to learn that they were receiving funding.

“I thought it wasn’t real at first,” said Lauren Walling, executive director of the Women’s Studio Workshop in Rosendale, New York. New York Times. “I was thinking, ‘Are they trying to get banking information from me? Is this a scam?’

Kohler, a longtime champion of self-taught artists, served as director of the John Michael Kohler Arts Center in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, for more than forty years, and was instrumental in fulfilling the museum’s mission to elevate artists contemporaries and self-taught who worked with humble materials, with an emphasis on those from Wisconsin. The mandate of his foundation is similar, but national in scope and responding to a broad definition of what constitutes a work of an artistic or cultural nature.

“I am honored to continue Ruth’s exceptional legacy in such an impactful way,” said Karen Patterson, executive director of the foundation. “She showed us that a thriving artistic community requires support for the entire ecosystem: from exhibition spaces, to festivals, to archives, to artistic environments, to residencies and to school programs. We are truly a multidimensional realm. We rely on each other. And none of this would be possible without the artists.

Patterson, former director of exhibitions at the Fabric Workshop and Museum in Philadelphia and senior curator at the Kohler Center, leads the foundation alongside program director Kim Nguyen, who was previously curator and program manager at the CCA Wattis Institute in San Francisco. Among the group of artists tasked with selecting recipients are Nikesha Breeze, Mel Chin, Gala Porras-Kim and Jaune Quick-to-See Smith. The foundation aims to award grants totaling between $17 million and $20 million annually, on par with funding provided by an established philanthropic organization like the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. For now, there are few guidelines attached to the decision-making process, reflecting Kohler’s ethics throughout his life. “Ruth was never prescriptive,” Patterson told the Time. “She used to say, ‘All art for everyone.'”

Among the recipients, which range from the more established to the lesser known, include Chicago’s Black Lunch Table, an oral history archival project; the First Peoples Fund, of Rapid City, South Dakota, which supports Indigenous artists; the Los Angeles-based Greetings from South-Central, an arts-focused community center; and the Yaddo Artists’ Retreat, in Saratoga Springs, New York. A full list is below.

Afro charities
Baltimore, MD

Alas De Agua Art Collective
Santa Fe, New Mexico

Alice Austen House Museum
Staten Island, New York

All my relationship arts
Minneapolis, Minnesota

Alternative roots
Atlanta, Georgia

Amargosa Opera House
Death Valley, California

appalshop
Whitesburg, Kentucky

Art Omi
Ghent, NY

Arts @ Large
Milwaukee, Wis.

arts of life
Chicago, IL

Ballet X
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Baxter Street Camera Club
New York, NY

Bemis Center for Contemporary Art
Omaha, NE

Benny Andrews Estate
Brooklyn, New York

Nomadic Museum of the Black Cube
Denver, CO

Black lunch table
Chicago, IL

BlackStar Projects
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Brooklyn Railroad
Brooklyn, New York

CAM Summer Scholarship
Memphis, TN

contemporary art center
Santa Fe, New Mexico

Charlotte Street Foundation
Kansas City, Missouri

New York Children’s Museum of the Arts
New York, NY

Coleman Center for the Arts
York, AL

Contemporary art library
Los Angeles, CA

Collective of cousins
United States

Creative growth
Oakland, California

Experimental sound studio
Chicago, IL

Alaska’s first light
Anchorage, AK

First Peoples Fund
Rapid City, SD

Fuse Box Festival
Austin, TX

Greetings from south central
Los Angeles, CA

Griot Museum of Black History
St. Louis, Missouri

Gyopo
Los Angeles, CA

Haystack Mountain Craft School
Deer Island, ME

Headlands Arts Center
Sausalito, California

International independent curators
New York, NY

Institute 193
Lexington, Kentucky

New York International Printing Center
New York, NY

Leap Arts in Education
San Francisco, California

Leather Archives and Museum
Chicago IL

Locust projects
Miami, Florida

Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE)
Los Angeles, CA

Los Angeles Visual Arts (LAVA)
Los Angeles, CA

flat rate gallery
Raleigh, North Carolina

SWAMP STL
St. Louis, Missouri

art materials
Long Island City, New York

Halfway Contemporary Art
Minneapolis, Minnesota

Milwaukee Film Festival
Milwaukee, Wis.

Jurassic Technology Museum
Los Angeles, CA

Pearl Fryar Topiary Garden
Bishopville, South Carolina

Penumbra Foundation
New York, NY

Collective of popular cuisine
Oakland, California

Pike Art School
McComb, MS

Poeh Center and Museum
Pojoaque Pueblo, New Mexico

Project for empty space
Newark, New Jersey

Townhouse project
Houston, TX

True art manners
Hartford, Connecticut

Real time and space
Oakland, California

Rivers Institute
New Orleans, LA

SOURCE STUDIO
Burnsville, North Carolina

Sala Diaz
San Antonio, TX

Seattle Asian American Film Festival
Seattle, WA

Secondary projects
Pasadena, California

Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture
Skowhegan, ME

Smack Mellon
Brooklyn, New York

Showcase for art and architecture
New York, NY

Greater Puertorriqueño
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Tamir Rice Foundation
Cleveland, Ohio

The black school
New Orleans, LA

The children’s art carnival
New York, NY

The clay workshop
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

The Heidelberg project
Detroit, Michigan

The laundromat project
Brooklyn, New York

Twelve Gates
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Voice Ciudadanas
Brooklyn, New York

White columns
New York, NY

Workshop Women’s Workshop
Rosendale, NY

Yaddo
Saratoga Springs, New York

ALL IMAGES