U.S. National Deadline: October 7, 2022 – The Bennett Prize is a stipend/grant-in-aid program established by American art collectors to support the fine art practice of a woman painter working in figurative realism…
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Submitted by Jaime Sharp on August 3, 2022
From NASAA: “The State Arts Agency Legislative Appropriations Preview has released a report forecasting government funding for the arts for fiscal year 2023. The data reported was collected before most states began their new fiscal year on July 1, 2022. On average, governors’ proposed state budgets include a 4.2% increase in general fund spending, with revenue forecasts increasing by 1.4%. Total legislative appropriations to state arts agencies are projected to decline by 2.9%.”
“This report provides a forecast of state government funding for the arts in fiscal year 2023. Data presented were collected before most states began a new fiscal year on July 1, 2022.”
“As of July 28, 2022, 48 states have enacted budgets for FY2023. Many states will revisit enacted budgets in the coming months to adjust for shifting revenue and expense conditions.”
Submitted by Jaime Sharp on August 2, 2022
“The Creativity Pioneers Fund catalyzes transformational social change by investing in, connecting, and championing cultural and creative organizations that advance bold and unconventional practices for building a more just, inclusive and equitable world. Working with and alongside organizations, donors and other stakeholders across the creative ecosystem, the Fund aims to mobilize a collective effort to advance Creativity for Social Change.”
What is the Creativity Pioneers Fund?
The Creativity Pioneers Fund supports organizations that reinforce the critical role of creativity for driving social impact.
The Fund aims to provide on-going infrastructure to build a platform that will drive greater resources and partnerships to the field of Creativity for Social Change.
Unrestricted funding is available to organizations across that demonstrate how they center creativity in their mission and programs. Organizations whose target audience is youth will be prioritized.
The Creativity Pioneers Fund welcomes applications from organizations working across the globe. We seek to have a range of fields and sectors represented to showcase the breadth and variety of organizations demonstrating the Creativity for Social Change mindset.
The deadline for submitting the Expression of Interest is August 12. Organization’s that, “reinforce the powerful role that creativity can play in transforming communities,” are encouraged to apply. Learn more about the fund here.
Submitted by Jaime Sharp on August 2, 2022
From the Kenneth Rainin Foundation: “When artist Ana Teresa Fernández first stepped inside the main studio and gallery of Creativity Explored she discovered magic…What emerged from Ana’s initial visit was a collaborative project “Of Here From There | De Aquí Desde Allá,” which is featured in the above video. The project took place in 2019 and 2020 and engaged nearly 50 developmentally disabled artists to explore ideas of movement and migration. An immersive exhibition at the San Francisco Art Institute in March 2020 brought a kaleidoscope of their expressive works to a wider public.”
“At Creativity Explored, it’s like you’re walking into a magical land of art. There are so many drawings and paintings and sculptures everywhere, and it seems like all the pieces are talking and speaking to you. The artists are all intensely creating work—drawing and painting and weaving and sculpting. Everyone’s just focused and making,” said artist Ana Teresa Fernández. “A lot of the artists don’t communicate with verbal language. But so much about what they are saying, and how it is that they communicate, is through their work—their marks, their colors, their patterns. So the idea of exploring the notion of home and their journey to where they are now was all about using those marks in their work as their voice.”
Submitted by Carmen Graciela Díaz on August 1, 2022
Black August, born out of Black liberation, resistance, and justice movements, is a month dedicated to critical learning and analysis, reflection and study of our roles in oppressive or liberatory systems, and an opportunity to grow, connect, and prepare for the challenging work ahead.
From the Black Liberation Movement and the Black August Hip Hop Project to“Writing While Black” andhow to fix classical arts, we invite you to join us this month in collective reflection where arts and culture are at the root of justice and liberation. As we are reminded by ABFE, A Philanthropic Partnership for Black Communities, “We must be in it for the long haul.”
We ask this August that cultural grantmakers look inward and listen outward, to invest in Black artists and communities, commit to listen, learn, and implement anti-racist practices, more widely amplify voices for change, and connect our work with the movement racial equity and justice. This month, GIA will share questions and proposals from our members on how cultural grantmaking can interrupt institutional and structural racism while building a more just funding ecosystem that prioritizes Black communities, organizations, and artists.
What We’re Reading
Together, You Can Redeem the Soul of Our Nation, The New York Times Opinion by the late John Lewis
The Case for Funding Black-Led Social Change, The Black Social Change Funders Network A Project of ABFE: A Philanthropic Partnership for Black Communities & The Hill-Snowdon Foundation
Dismantling White Supremacy & Anti-Blackness in Philanthropy andWhat is a Just Transition for Philanthropy?, Justice Funders
National Performance Networks’s LANE Honors Black August, by a cohort members of Leveraging a Network for Equity (LANE)
Schomburg Center Black Liberation Reading List, Schomburg Center Staff, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture
International Deadline: August 19, 2022 – Greywood Arts & the National Space Centre invite expressions of interest from artists working in any visual, installation, or time-based medium who engage with themes of outer space…
International Deadline: August 11, 2022 – The Photographers’ Gallery, UK’s leading centre for the presentation and exploration of photography, is seeking an exceptional candidate to join us as our Director…
International Deadline: September 8, 2022 – Global creative company, M&C Saatchi Group and London’s iconic Saatchi Gallery have launched a new international art initiative – the annual Art for Change Prize…
May I speak plainly?
I hate that stupid pickle.
Pickle, Comedian, every “Bored Ape”, and all of the other decidedly hollow pieces that ring of the same artless ventures. It makes me so vehemently, existentially bored with the art world.
For those unaware, Pickle is a currently on-view creation by Australian artist Matthew Griffin that consists of a pickle from a McDonald’s cheeseburger he threw at the ceiling of the Michael Lett Gallery in Auckland, New Zealand. It is now going for NZ$10,000. Discussions of the piece circle around the idea of it stoking ideas of how we create value in objects and one another.
A readily-available connection to draw is to that of Maurizio Cattelan’s $120,000 Comedian—a banana duct-taped to a wall. Cattelan, a facetious creator of sculpture and installations, has been abuzz in the art news world almost constantly since the piece went up in 2019, and was similarly omnipresent in conversation with his solid gold toilet America.
But when we have had Duchamp’s Fountain for over a century, what makes these artists think they are saying anything?
Let me state for the record that I do not in any way hold any aspect of the art industry sacred. I am the first in a room to defend against a naysayers belief that modern art is “lazy.” My tastes are of the obtuse, the strange, the brutal, the flippant, and the surprising. Which is perhaps why these works fall so flat for me. With all of their purported intent of creating conversation in the art world, poking fun at the system, and challenging paradigms, they feel decades behind on the discussion and add little to nothing to it.
There are certain ideas that have been executed so perfectly in seminal explorations that future derivatives are doomed to be nothing but. Take two examples of early modern performance art showcasing human action without accountability: Cut Piece and Rhythm 0. A decade apart but both rich with significance for participatory art, Yoko Ono and Marina Abramović tapped into important ideas of audience and artist, freedom from consequence, and humanity’s capability for violence. These works are icons of performance art, so much so that their approach are a standard of replication to extremely watered down degrees. The methodology might change, but it is hard to wring a new message out of those scenarios, and knowing what the result tends to be, it is a troubling concept to return to.
Similarly one can look at Yves Klein’s Zone de Sensibilité Picturale Immatérielle and Andy Warhol’s Invisible Sculpture. Klein’s playful yet ritualistic approach to Zone from 1959 to 1962 was a brilliant piece of early conceptual art steeped in the immaterial and ephemeral aspects of life and exchange. Warhol’s Invisible Sculpture in the front of the Manhattan nightclub Area (which itself can also be likened to Klein’s 1958 piece La spécialisation de la sensibilité à l’état matière première en sensibilité picturale stabilisée: Le Vide) was a clever exploration of fame and value, and a notably vulnerable position for the elusive pop-artist. It is an idea that has been replicated verbatim, most recently by Salvatore Garau, and it puzzles what is unique about this venture in the modern context.
And of course, Warhol taught us that context is everything. It is not simply the work or the artist or the place or the time—it is all of these and more that create what is cherished in art.
And so I can’t help but ask: in what context are these works meaningful? These pieces of produce laid bare until some wealthy collector chooses to buy that certificate of authenticity; these DeviantArt calibre cartoons serving as status symbols for crypto-playboys; these varying quantities of literally nothing. In a world where so many of us have so little and those creating and trading in the art world have far too much, what is clever about this stale cycle of currency?
It’s a joke. And I get it.
But it’s a bad one.
International Deadline: August 31, 2022 – The Stiftung Künstlerdorf Schöppingen awards 40 fellowships each year in the fields of visual art, literature and composition. The fellowships are linked to a residency…