How a Quirky Art Prize Tied to the DeVos Family Went Political
GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — Patricia Constantine thought hard about whether to use an image of the education secretary, Betsy DeVos, in her entry to this year’s ArtPrize contest. The mixed-media painting depicts Ms. Constantine as a carnival freak suffering for the perceived misdeeds of Ms. DeVos and President Trump. But Ms. DeVos isn’t just your everyday target in Michigan: She and her family provide major financial support to the ArtPrize awards that might honor the very works that skewer her.
“Am I going to back off because the DeVos family donates a lot of money to the city and her son founded ArtPrize?” Ms. Constantine, a professor of illustration at Ferris State University here. “What would that say to my students?”
Her piece is one of more than 1,350 entries by artists from 47 countries in one of the art world’s most peculiar and richest competitions, now in its ninth year. Over a three-week period, this city hosts ArtPrize, which displays entries in public spaces around town and lets viewers choose the winners of half its $500,000 purse. Ms. DeVos’s son Rick conceived the competition and initially financed it.
The 2017 competition, which culminates on Oct. 6, brings with it new curiosity and interest — as well as a more politicized flavor — because it is the first of the Trump era and the first since Ms. DeVos became education secretary.
“Any artwork put into ArtPrize is going to be about ArtPrize, the DeVoses and Trump,” said Eric Millikin, an artist in Detroit whose entry, “Made of Money,” used a weave of actual dollar bills and digital manipulation to produce portraits of accomplished people who died poor. “I’ve always been conflicted about participating because of the DeVoses, but this year with Betsy DeVos in the federal government, it was a conflict I had to address.”
The DeVos family, heirs to the multibillion-dollar Amway fortune, has long been controversial in Michigan for spending big on conservative political causes, but Betsy DeVos’s elevation brings new national prominence to the clan, which also includes her brother, Erik D. Prince, a founder of the private security firm formerly known as Blackwater. Mr. Prince is under fire for advocating privatization of United States military missions.
About 16 percent of the $3.5 million annual budget for the nonprofit ArtPrize comes from the various DeVos foundations, according to 2016 tax disclosures, with the rest from other foundations and local and national business support. Rick DeVos, a tech entrepreneur, is chairman of ArtPrize’s board, and family members donate generously and sit on the boards of many institutions that are among the 175 ArtPrize showplaces.
Mr. DeVos was unavailable to comment, an ArtPrize publicist said. Nobody from the Dick & Betsy DeVos Family Foundation responded to a request for comment, and Ms. DeVos did not answer an inquiry sent to the Education Department.