PEW EXHIBITION GRANTS ANNOUNCED; CLARK FOUNDATION GRANTS TO NEW YORK ARTS GROUPS
The Pew Exhibitions Initiative will dole out about $1 million this year to support eight exhibitions, including a major retrospective by the Philadelphia Museum of Art that will explore the career of the painter Arshile Gorky, reports Stephan Salisbury for the Philadelphia Inquirer. Pew is also providing funds for early planning of two exhibitions. The museum will receive $250,000 from the grant-making organization, a unit of the Pew Charitable Trusts, to help fund the 180-work Gorky exhibition, which is scheduled to start in October and run to January 2010. The Gorky retrospective will then travel to Tate Modern in London and the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art.
Paula Marincola, director of the exhibitions initiative, noted that two grants this year would go to first-time recipients, which she said reflected the “growing scope of our program and the emerging talents in our community.” Those first-time grants are $5,000 to Aaron Igler/LURE Projects for planning a multidisciplinary exhibition of ten sound artists, and $30,000 to Vox Populi, an artist collective, for “Dead Flowers,” a two-part exhibition exploring the historical notion of the underground and its legacies. The show will open in Philadelphia in February 2010 and then travel to Participant Inc., an alternative space in New York City run by Lia Gangitano, who is curating “Dead Flowers.” Andrew Suggs, executive director of Vox Populi, said the show would explore the work of artists who have “mostly refused traditional venues,” such as commercial galleries. Other grants include Arcadia University, $89,500 for “Ai Weiwei: Dropping the Urn”; Basekamp, $19,850 for “Plausible Artworlds”; Eastern State Penitentiary, $47,090 for “Release”; Institute of Contemporary Art at the University of Pennsylvania, $188,000 for “Sheila Hicks: Fifty Years”; and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, $160,000 for “Barkley Hendricks: Birth of the Cool.” The Philadelphia Art Alliance will also receive $17,000 for planning an exhibition with the Miss Rockaway Armada, an artist collective.
In other news, several New York City arts organizations have been selected to receive $50,000 grants from the Robert Sterling Clark Foundation, reports Robin Pogrebin for the New York Times. The effort represents the foundation’s response to the economic downturn’s impact on individual artists and small arts institutions. To distribute the grants geographically, the foundation chose three organizations that assist small arts groups in their boroughs—the Bronx Council on the Arts, the Brooklyn Arts Council, and the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council. The foundation also selected two organizations that serve artists from specific disciplines throughout the city: ART/NY and the Joyce Theater Company. In addition, the foundation selected a financial services provider, the Nonprofit Finance Fund, which helps small arts organizations citywide.
