Darren Walker, Who Reoriented the Ford Foundation, Will Step Down

Darren Walker, the president of the Ford Foundation, one of the nation’s largest and most influential philanthropies, recently recalled the day his assistant excitedly told him that President Barack Obama wanted to meet him. He gently corrected her.

“I said that President Obama wants to meet with the president of the Ford Foundation — he isn’t interested in meeting with Darren Walker,” he said. “It’s important to have that clarity so that when the day comes that you’re no longer president of the Ford Foundation, you can still find joy and happiness and satisfaction.”

For Mr. Walker, who turns 65 next month, that day will soon arrive. He announced Monday that he would step down as the president of the Ford Foundation at the end of 2025 after what will have been a consequential 12-year tenure in which he shifted the institution’s focus to inequality and oversaw the distribution of $7 billion in grants.

It is a momentous departure. In reorienting the Ford Foundation to address inequality, Mr. Walker was aiming to address “not just wealth disparities,” he wrote in 2015, “but injustices in politics, culture and society that compound inequality and limit opportunity.” {snip}

{snip}

Under Mr. Walker, Ford increased grants to organizations in communities of color to $206 million from $111 million in 2014, and grants to help women and girls were increased to $124 million from $88 million during the same period.

In 2023, when Ford gave out $610 million in the United States and internationally, the amount given through its Gender, Racial and Ethnic Justice program — which began in 2016 during Mr. Walker’s tenure — was second only to the amount from its Civic Engagement and Government program. More than half of its grants went to organizations led by people of color, and more than half went to organizations led by women. Over the last five years, Ford has given $400 million to organizations focused on disability. Ford has also supported journalism programs, including some at The New York Times.

Mr. Walker “has led the entire philanthropic community to re-examine and reimagine its bedrock assumptions,” the philanthropist Melinda French Gates said in a statement.

The foundation has gone to great lengths to foster greater equity in the arts. In 2018, Ford, with the Walton Family Foundation, committed $6 million toward diversifying the curators and management at art museums. It helped underwrite the Metropolitan Opera’s first production by a Black composer, Terence Blanchard’s “Fire Shut Up in My Bones,” and has supported diversity initiatives at the School of American Ballet, the training academy of New York City Ballet.

Mr. Walker has been an influential figure in the country’s cultural ecosystem, playing behind-the-scenes roles in museum director searches or handling cultural controversies and becoming a ubiquitous presence at galas and glittery events.

His tenure hasn’t always been smooth. In 2020, he was criticized by some for his handling of the controversy surrounding an exhibition of the artist Philip Guston’s work, which included depictions of Ku Klux Klan figures. Ford had contributed $1 million to the show, and Mr. Walker was among those who supported postponing it until 2024 in the wake of the George Floyd killings so more context could be added. Prominent artists criticized the decision, saying the institutions “fear controversy” and “lack faith in the intelligence of their audience.” The show ended up opening in Boston with some changes in 2022.

Some critics have noted that Ford supports the work of some people who are friendly with Mr. Walker. It has supported an Art for Justice Fund started by the art collector and patron Agnes Gund, which promotes criminal justice reform and seeks to reduce mass incarceration in the United States, as well as the work of some well-known curators and artists who are also his friends.

“I plead guilty to believing in the idea of Black genius and supporting it,” Mr. Walker said. “I plead guilty when friends like Agnes Gund have big ideas for collaboration — to investing in that for impact in the field. There is no doubt that I have supported the work of people who I enjoy friendships with.”

{snip}