PEW CENTER FOR ARTS & HERITAGE ANNOUNCES 2017 GRANTEES
The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage announced today the recipients of fifty-three grants in support of the Philadelphia region’s cultural organizations and artists. The 2017 awards total more than $10.3 million and provide funding for twelve new Pew Fellowships, thirty-nine project grants, and two advancement grants.
“The center’s 2017 grant recipients represent the breadth and vibrancy that make Greater Philadelphia such a compelling destination for arts and cultural experiences,” said executive director Paula Marincola. “We are very pleased to continue to support such wide-ranging, extraordinary work from the region’s independent artists and emerging organizations, as well as some of Philadelphia’s largest and well-established institutions.”
Funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts and established in 2005, the Pew Center for Arts & Heritage issues grants in two areas: performance and exhibitions and public interpretation. The center offers twelve annual fellowships to individual artists working in all disciplines as well as multi-year advancement grants to high-performing institutions undertaking bold, innovative organizational initiatives.
Among this year’s pew fellows are Nichole Canuso, a choreographer and performer whose practice experiments with audience participation, personal narratives, and what she describes as “the kinesthetic intellect;” Brenda Dixon Gottschild, whose five decades of work as a writer and cultural scholar surveys the presence and influence of black dance and choreography in America; and Anuradha Mathur and Dilip da Cunha, landscape architects whose collaborative work imagines new possibilities for design of the built environment.
Project grants awarded include the commission of a site-specific performance and an exhibition showcasing the work of Israeli filmmaker and installation artist Yael Bartana at the Philadelphia Museum of Art; artist and independent curator Kayla Romberger’s publishers-in-residence program that engages audiences with public talks and workshops at Ulises bookshop in Fishtown; and the Franklin Institute’s “Terracotta Warriors of the First Emperor,” designed to transport visitors to an ancient burial site through augmented reality.
Advancement grant recipients include University of Pennsylvania’s Penn Museum in support of its effort to develop new approaches to exhibition design, public programming, and communications and the Settlement Music School, to develop new curricula, teaching methods, and communications strategies that enhance learning and attract and retain students. The full list of the 2017 grantees can be found at the Pew Center for Arts & Heritage website.
