Monk’s Ceramics Will Support Artists in Boston

Pottery created by a Benedictine monk who died of cancer in August will create a fund to support artists in Boston, reports The Boston Globe.

The Boston Foundation and the Pucker Gallery will work together to endow the Brother Thomas Fund, named for Brother Thomas Bezanson, the monk who earned acclaim for his richly colored, unusually shaped pieces. The gallery will sell a collection of his pottery, appraised at $15-million, and half of the proceeds will go to the Boston Foundation. The Brother Thomas Fund could give out $450,000 a year, beginning in 2009, to support arts groups and struggling artists, reports the Globe.

“My thought is simply to help other artists as I have been helped. I am not thinking of recognizing or rewarding successful artists, but to give a ‘leg up’ to artists in need. I am not thinking specifically of any one medium, although I certainly have a bias towards those working in the art of fire-and-clay, the potter,” wrote a dying Brother Bezanson to Bernard Pucker, of the Pucker Gallery.