The Brooklyn Rail

Lenore G. Tawney Foundation

When Lenore Tawney incorporated the LGT Foundation (now doing business as the Lenore G. Tawney Foundation) in 1989, she became part of a small but growing number of artists to establish a foundation. Only a fraction of these artist-endowed foundations were founded by women, and few represented artists working in non-traditional materials. But Tawney, whose broad practice included a variety of media though she was best known as a weaver, was accustomed to being an outlier. The choice to name her foundation with the anonymous “LGT” initials is also revealing. Tawney had long been philanthropic but frequently made gifts anonymously, preferring to follow a quiet path, out of the limelight.