Oliver Tree's Family Launches Artist Grant Foundation
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- Oliver Tree died in a helicopter crash in Brazil at age 32, roughly two weeks before his family launched the foundation he had planned in life.
- Dr. Oliver Tree's Extremely Epic Art Grant for Baby Geniuses launched Saturday with a mission to fund artists working in music, film, installation, and performance art.
- Tree's stated philosophy — quoted on the foundation's site — was that mastering craft requires 'physically getting their hands dirty,' so grants cannot be used for equipment purchases or education but can pay collaborators and gear rentals.
- A committee of Tree's past collaborators in music, film, and art will vote annually on grant recipients, per his own pre-death video interview.
- The foundation says it is funded by selling Tree's specified non-art and non-sentimental assets, will also accept donations, and is intended to remain active for 50 to 100 years.
- A celebration of life for Tree is scheduled for July 25 at UC Santa Cruz's Quarry Amphitheater — invite-only for friends and family, but streaming live — with grant application details to be announced soon.
Why it matters: Tree directed that his own assets fund an artist-run, artist-decided grant pool lasting up to a century — a rare artist-controlled endowment that explicitly bars the typical 'buy gear or pay tuition' uses, channeling money instead into hands-on production labor for grantees chosen by his collaborators.
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