Woody Wickham’s Legacies
04 Mar 2009
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Woody Wickham is really gone from us. I’m going to be sad sometimes, I know, but mostly I am grateful to have been able to know and learn from him. Woody thought that media for public knowledge and action are essential to an open society, and he well spent a lot of capital, moral and fiscal, to back that opinion.
Woody, who was a funder and mentor of many media arts efforts over the last 25 years, had a resurgence of a gall bladder cancer and passed away with dignity in Chicago in January. He was 66 years old. His legacies are everywhere in the world of media arts.
After graduating from Harvard, where he exercised his wit as editor of the Lampoon, he had worked in Mexico before returning to the U.S. and a creative career in foundation work.
He worked longest as a program officer at the John D. and Catherine T. John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, and he made independent media his special concern. He maintained his predecessor’s investment in media arts organizations. There’s nary a one in the U.S. that didn’t get MacArthur funding. His choices shaped a generation’s worth of media production. He funded a wide array of documentary films, he mentored other program officers who also supported independent media, and he carefully cultivated both people and organizations important to the field. He kept MacArthur investment in media arts going far longer than most programs lasted, and when at the end of 16 years a halt was called, he worked hard with individual organizations and people to ensure both that they understood and were given counsel and exit grants for the transition.
When he retired from the Foundation, he served on a variety of boards and generously consulted with many nonprofit organizations, including the Center for Social Media. Woody was one of the key advisors to its launch. This year’s Making Your Media Matter Conference at the Center for Social Media was dedicated to him.
All of us who were nurtured by Woody share a feeling of enormous privilege. We were of course lucky to have benefited from his attention, the grants he was able to approve, the doors he could open, and the astonishing network of colleagues, allies and friends that he introduced us to. Besides that, Woody served as a model. He brought to his relationships an intellectual rigor that could be awe-inspiring or terrifying, depending on whether you were prepared. At the same time, he brought a quiet, steady optimism and a generosity of spirit that could call forth those qualities in others. You were never in doubt that Woody both understood and respected you, and also expected you to be the very best you could muster. And he usually could make you laugh, too.
Woody’s model of leadership became particularly important for me when we served together on the board of the Independent Television Service. I begged him to join us in what I believe to be one of the most significant U.S. institutions supporting independent filmmakers and the publics they want to reach. Always judicious, he collected his intelligence, and asked a few probing questions. Then he joined up, and eventually became chairman of the board. His careful approach to a strict governance model—meticulous oversight without meddling—was a precious learning lesson. When I left, he wrote the board resolution thanking me. Close reading showed that he had constructed it so that each new clause began with the word with which the previous one ended—a testimony that he had spent considerable time crafting the document and his personal thank you. Thank you, Woody.
Near the end, Woody made arrangements to create a butterfly garden in Chicago, and you can contribute to its endowment at Woodward A. Wickham Butterfly Garden at the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum, 2430 N. Cannon Drive, Chicago, Illinois 60614, attn: Molly Riley, Development Office. You can also build on Woody’s legacies by creating, sharing and promoting independent media voices, which Woody believed were essential to an open society.
There should be more people with Woody’s combination of generosity and rigor. The field of media arts has never had a stauncher friend, or one who held us to higher standards. He invested in all of us, and he expected us to reward his trust. Time to get going.
PAT AUFDERHEIDE is Professor and Director of The Center for Social Media, School of Communication at American University
