Brooklyn shows its ‘genius’ with four MacArthur winners
No-strings-attached fellowships for artists, scientists, achievers
Brooklyn has a flair for genius: Nine of the 24 MacArthur Fellows who will be receiving so-called “genius grants” this year are from the New York area, and four of them hail from Brooklyn.
Visual artist Carrie Mae Weems, fiction/ nonfiction writer Donald Antrim, fiction writer Karen Russell, and dancer/ choreographer Kyle Abraham, all called “exceptionally creative,” will receive the coveted no-strings-attached MacArthur grants, which amount to $625,000 paid out over five years.
The grants are meant to give winners the freedom to follow their own creative vision.