A year ago, the mood in Chelsea was rather less glum. Local aficionados, examining their own epoch, might well describe the first eight years of the millennium as an Age of Optimism. Back then there appeared no limit to the curator’s good fortune: galleries thrived, crowds gathered, artists bought homes in East Hampton. Now, as the market continues to dip (at times precipitously), things in Chelsea have become quite a bit quieter. The din of gallery-goers, once a sign of the art world’s good cheer, has been replaced by the eerie sound of a thousand belts being tightened at once.

Depending on how you feel about the art of the last decade, this might strike you as good news. Perhaps it’s for the best, you think, that an unknown painter can no longer sell a soiled napkin for twenty-five grand. (When the art market gets over-stuffed, it tends to regurgitate.) Of course that’s not to say you wish ill on the young artists who came of age in recent years: it’s just that you (and I), perhaps betraying a nostalgic affection for certain honored traditions, prefer our starving artists to be slightly more starving. If the pudgier among them learn from these hard times that it takes more than a well-connected curator or an inflated market to feed yourself as an artist, then might this not mark a return to an Age of Reason?

Let them starve, you say, but don’t let them perish. In response, the New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA), like a vociferous light at the end of a tunnel, announced last week that it will be distributing $917,000 in fellowships to 134 artists living and working in New York State. Each artist will receive $7,000, which may be spent on anything from rent to supplies; a modest sum, to be sure, but presumably enough to encourage continued creativity. And there’s little doubt that the artists on the list will be glad to have it.

This year, the folks at NYFA seem particularly sensitive to the artist’s lot. Their recent press release, a fine example of compassionate PR, is loaded with references to the market’s slump (“With recent contemporary auctions signifying that the art market bubble has finally burst, artists will need funding more than ever to survive”), this slump’s effect on the average artist (“Artists across the state are suffering from substantial losses of income”), and statistical data meant to illustrate exactly how shitty most artists have it (“A recent survey conducted by the NYFA suggested that almost half of the artists living in New York State make less than $25,000 per annum”). Perhaps it’s the fact that many artists have prospered (comparatively) during the last several years that makes the NYFA feel as if they have to win our sympathy. Most of us, as tired as we are of glutted galleries and over-hyped shows, will need little convincing.

Since the fellowship was created in 1985, the NYFA has awarded over $22 million to roughly 3,688 artists. Among them have been future winners of the Pulitzer Prize, the Tony Award, the Academy Award, Guggenheim Fellowships, and MacArthur Fellowships — artists like Tamara Jenkins, Billy Collins, Julie Taymor, Barbara Kruger, Ross Bleckner and Andre Serrano. These names alone are proof of the NYFA’s prescience and good taste. What’s more, rewarding young and mid-career artists for the work they’ve done (rather than for how much they sell it for) seems like a fine way to keep in check the gallery system, which tends sometimes to promote artists rather than help them. The NYFA’s commitment to artists of merit is a tempered stroke of humanitarianism, one powered equally by Optimism and Reason.