Next to the billions going out the door via Mike Bloomberg’s wider giving, Bloomberg Philanthropies’ Asphalt Art Initiative is fairly modest. But it’s a great window into this funding giant’s arts support, which weaves in other characteristic Bloomberg priorities as it pursues cities-focused impact.
Inspired by Bloomberg’s governing priorities during his tenure as mayor of New York City, the Asphalt Art Initiative has awarded money to 90 arts-driven public space projects in North America and Europe that improve traffic safety, revitalize public spaces and engage local communities.
Perhaps more than any other megadonor, Bloomberg is known for using data to guide his giving, so it won’t come as a huge surprise to learn that Bloomberg Philanthropies commissioned a report to gauge the initiative’s effectiveness. The findings, compiled in 2022’s Asphalt Art Safety Study, showed a 50% drop in crashes involving pedestrians or cyclists and a 27% increase in drivers yielding to pedestrians across 22 projects in the U.S. A year later, a Federal Highway Administration document laying out national standards for traffic control devices used on all public roads, bikeways or private roads open to public travel cited the study, noting that it showed “a correlation between asphalt art and improved safety.”
In light of the initiative’s success, in mid-September, Bloomberg Philanthropies announced that the fifth round of grants would increase from $25,000 to up to $100,000 for up to 10 applying cities in the United States, Mexico and Canada, capping a five-year, data-driven trajectory that has all of the hallmarks of Bloomberg’s unique brand of giving.
Kate D. Levin, who oversees the Bloomberg Philanthropies Arts program, said, “This is a case where funding a piece of research about before-and-after safety helped our grantees further compiling evidence that is helpful in addressing the contagion of traffic accidents in the United States.”
I caught up with Levin in early October to discuss the initiative and common threads that run through Bloomberg Philanthropies’ arts grantmaking, such as how its investments complement priorities like public health and its pragmatic approach to tracking grantee performance.
“The larger perspective in all of this,” Levin told me, “is Bloomberg Philanthropies’ commitment to filling gaps, finding things that are meaningful and, when necessary, taking risks.”
Tens of billions out the door — and much more to follow
Before we dive into Bloomberg Philanthropies’ arts and culture grantmaking, a quick check-in is in order on its namesake, whom IP called “one of the highest-impact megadonors of our time.”
We have applauded Bloomberg’s philanthropy throughout the years, including his efforts to combat the opioid epidemic, reduce drowning deaths and support historically black colleges and universities. On the other hand, I’ve questioned whether his $1.8 billion financial aid gift to his alma mater, Johns Hopkins University, could have had a bigger impact if it flowed to less-affluent universities that primarily serve low-income students. IP founder and Editor David Callahan is also on the record asking Bloomberg — and, for that matter, other megadonors — to more robustly articulate “a clear set of underlying values” that animate their giving.
However, those critiques need to be set in the context of Bloomberg’s strengths as a giver. In a climate where many billionaires don’t engage in meaningful philanthropy relative to their net worth or conduct their giving in ways that are difficult to track, Bloomberg has given away $17.4 billion and moves much of that money via a transparent private foundation. The Giving Pledge signatory’s support has been the lynchpin in countless important public-private partnerships in the U.S. and around the globe.
If anything, a recurring theme in our coverage of the 82-year-old is an anticipated torrent in future giving that may dwarf even the current scope of Bloomberg Philanthropies’ support. Bloomberg’s net worth has ballooned to $105 billion and last year, he committed to giving his 88% stake in Bloomberg LP to Bloomberg Philanthropies when he dies.
Of course, that might also further solidify philanthropy’s top-heaviness, wherein a handful of megadonors wield a disproportionate amount of influence in the public sphere. We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. Until then, let’s take a closer look at how Bloomberg Philanthropies is moving the needle in the field of arts and culture.
“The unit of change is cities”
Bloomberg Philanthropies isn’t best known, perhaps, for its arts funding, but the arts have been a priority for the funder for years, listed alongside Bloomberg funding staples like public health and education. In recent years, it says it has funded around 600 arts organizations around the world annually — examples include Public Art Fund, Creative Time and the Art Production Fund.
The Asphalt Art Initiative falls under the Bloomberg Philanthropies’ Supporting Public Arts priority (one of several, including Strengthening Local Arts Organizations, Connecting Audiences to Culture Online or Onsite, Advancing the Arts Around the World, and Funder Collaborations). Supporting Public Arts is driven by the funder’s belief that artists can lead constructive conversations in the civic space.
“We designed the [Asphalt Art Initiative] with the idea that artists are problem solvers,” Levin said. “Not all artists specialize in engaging with the public, but there is a cadre that do, and those folks need to be recognized for what their abilities can bring to the public will-building that is necessary for social cohesion in cities.”
By positioning artists as agents that can build social cohesion, the Asphalt Art Initiative mirrors how other arts funders are using individual support for artists to galvanize action around issues like climate change and criminal justice reform. At the same time, the initiative also underscores efforts by civic-minded grantmakers to soothe the body politic through bridge building, fostering pluralism and cultivating a sense of belonging.
These efforts are particularly timely because the work complements another key Bloomberg funding priority — strengthening cities that, depending on who you ask, are navigating a post-COVID “urban doom loop” caused by an exodus of residents, deserted offices and dwindling tax revenues.
Bloomberg, for his part, doesn’t seem to buy into urban doomerism. “Mike always says that the unit of change is cities,” Levin said. “The majority of people in the world live in cities, and those numbers are only going to grow. So if you want to help the most people, looking to cities is how he wants to prioritize his philanthropy, and arts and culture has shown to have a profound, ongoing impact.”
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“Art is unpredictable, but it’s dependable”
While maximizing impact may be the goal here, Levin, like other arts funders, recognizes the limitations and caveats that come with seeking to measure the arts experience. Calculating how many people attend an exhibition, and extrapolating civic or cultural impact from there, is a much more inexact science than, say, bringing down death rates with an innovative cancer drug.
But that doesn’t mean funders shouldn’t widen the lens on the arts and their broader benefits. “Art is unpredictable, but it’s dependable,” Levin said. “The way it manifests itself feels like a one-off, but it has been dependable in producing certain kinds of socially cohesive, health-related benefits.”
We’ve already seen how Bloomberg Philanthropies believes its Asphalt Art Initiative can build social cohesion. As another example, a public art project funded through Bloomberg’s Public Art Challenge, which partners city mayors with artists to solve urban issues, achieved similar results.
The project, The Temple of Time, expanded an art therapy program that turned Florida’s Coral Springs Museum of Art into a space that has helped children and educators cope after the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. The initiative created a “community dialogue that wasn’t necessarily happening organically or was happening in narrower frames,” Levin said. One can’t plug the impact of such a project into a spreadsheet, but few rational people would argue that it didn’t lead to constructive outcomes.
That said, Bloomberg art projects frequently interface with issues that are more conducive to quantitative measurement, such as the dramatic improvements in traffic and pedestrian safety that resulted from the Asphalt Art Initiative. Another Public Art Challenge winner, Fertile Ground Project: Inspiring Dialogue About Food Access, supported efforts by officials in Jackson, Mississippi to use art to raise awareness of healthy food options and inform nutrition policy. “One of the things that we’re proud of as a long-term impact was [that] the city reorganized its bus routes so that people could get to stores that sell fresh food much more easily,” Levin said.
The Fertile Ground project also exemplifies how the arts can advance public health, which is one of Bloomberg Philanthropies’ top funding priorities.
For the past two years, it has supported the EpiArts Lab, based at the University of Florida’s Center for Arts in Medicine in partnership with Dr. Daisy Fancourt at University College London. Modeled after a similar body of research in the U.K., the EpiArts Lab has analyzed longitudinal datasets that follow thousands of U.S. residents over several decades to understand the benefits of “social prescribing,” an approach in which healthcare providers address patients’ wellbeing by connecting them to a range of nonclinical services, such as community arts and cultural activities.
“Depending on the issues — loneliness, depression, particularly for often older populations — arts participation turns out to be a very effective way of creating change,” Levin said. “Researchers in the U.S. are replicating this modality and looking at ways that it applies to the U.S. experience.”
“Figuring out what metrics really matter”
Bloomberg Philanthropies’ nuanced approach to gauging the impact of its arts investments extends to how it tracks its grantees’ performance.
“We are completely attuned to and in many ways sympathetic to the notion that funders who demand a lot of documentation from arts grantees are maybe not doing anyone a favor,” Levin said. “For organizations trying to head in a particular direction, we feel we can be helpful in figuring out what metrics really matter.”
Levin’s commentary speaks to nonprofit leaders’ relationship with evaluation. Leaders tolerate having to fill out reports because their funding depends on it, but many also recognize that certain metrics can improve the organization’s operations, especially if the funder in question possesses deep, cross-sector expertise.
Consider how Levin and her team work with grantees in its Digital Accelerator Program, which provides grants and training to help arts organizations invest in strategic improvements to their technology infrastructure. “We ask organizations to select some metrics based on the problem that they’re trying to solve,” Levin said. “And I’m not going to lie — some organizations in the early days were kind of grumpy about that.” Over time, however, she said those organizations found the exercise to be useful.
Levin attributes grantees’ change of heart to Bloomberg Philanthropies’ high level of risk tolerance. “We recognize that what you set out to do isn’t necessarily what happened,” she said. “Sometimes something much better happens.”
As for the latest round of Asphalt Art Initiative grants, Bloomberg Philanthropies will be accepting applications from cities until January 31, 2025. Winning cities should be announced in spring 2025 for projects to be installed in 2025–26.
On one hand, the initiative is simply an example of a funder bankrolling a public art project. But by the way Bloomberg Philanthropies characterizes its funding, the art is less of an endpoint than it is a tool that empowers communities to advocate for their interests, whether it’s improving traffic safety, healing trauma or boosting access to healthy food. “It’s an incredibly positive framework for people to feel like they have more agency in reshaping their communities,” Levin said.
