Robert Johnson worked with The Rhode Island Foundation for most of the nine years between his wife’s death in 1990 and his own in 1999 to fashion a lasting legacy for Rhode Island’s artists: a $1.2 million endowment — The Robert and Margaret MacColl Johnson Fellowship Fund — to create no-strings-attached fellowships for Rhode Island composers, writers and visual artists. The resulting $25,000 awards will be among the largest offered in the United States.
The deadline is Oct. 1 to apply for the first three fellowships, which will be for music composition. Fellowships to the other two disciplines will follow in succeeding years.
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Johnson was born in Providence and lived here and in Little Compton all his life. During his career, he invented a “damascene” process that joined gold, copper, and bronze in metalwork. His wife, Margaret MacColl Johnson, was a public relations expert with a second career in academia.
The MacColl Johnson fellowships join several other major endowments and arts programs at the Foundation, including the $1.6 million Antonio Cirino Fund, which provides scholarships to graduate school for would-be art teachers, and the $1.2 million Rhode Island Arts Fund from which the Foundation makes grants to small and minority-run arts organizations.
