United Arts Agency | UAA

Category Archives: Call for Artists

APAP ArtsForward: A new program to support the performing arts’ safe and equitable reopening and recovery

November 04, 2021 by Call for Artists
Submitted by Carmen Graciela Díaz on November 4, 2021

The Association of Performing Arts Professionals (APAP) announced recently that it received $3 million from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation for APAP ArtsForward, a new program to support the performing arts field’s safe, vibrant, and equitable reopening and recovery.

According to the announcement, the program will focus primarily on providing grants to APAP presenter members and their artist/ensemble partners as venues reopen, tours resume, and audiences reconnect. It will also offer services and resources to the field-at-large around reopening, booking, and touring through the pandemic.

Read here.

MSCHF sells off 1000 copies of Andy Warhol’s ‘Fairies’

November 01, 2021 by Call for Artists

The tricks and treats of the season have all been doled out as we step into November. But it wasn’t only Halloween that saw disguises in abundance: 999 paintings were also masquerading as something they weren’t. Brooklyn-based art collective MSCHF was stirring up their namesake mischief by reproducing just under a thousand copies of Andy Warhol’s Fairies and has disseminated the copies—as well as the original—for $250 a pop.

 

Part of MSCHF’s Museum of Forgeries collection, the group piece is titled as Possibly Real Copies of ‘Fairies’ by Andy Warhol. Cheeky, to be sure, and certainly in line with its proximity to Halloween, its creator’s innovative contexts for the mass-produced, as well as the mischievous drive of its fae subject matter. The sketch by Warhol, made in 1954, is a simplistic doodle of three stout, naked subjects, two twirling what seems to be a string or a jump rope above the third who is gracefully stepping beneath it. An unassuming piece that likely never expected to have such mischief realized on its behalf.

 

The original copy of Andy Warhol’s Fairies was purchased by MSCHF in 2016 for just $8,125. Dropping the individual price of it down to $250 has resulted in an absolute steal for whoever received the authentic Warhol, and has been no loss to the art collective. With every single painting quickly being nabbed up, they’ve made $250,000 from Possibly Real Copies of ‘Fairies’ by Andy Warhol and left their quizzical fingerprint on scores of collections.

“Ubiquity is the darkness in which novelty and the avant-garde die their truest deaths,” MSCHF state on their site. “More than slashed canvas or burned pages, democratization of access or ownership destroys any work premised on exclusivity…By forging Fairies en masse, we obliterate the trail of provenance for the artwork. Though physically undamaged, we destroy any future confidence in the veracity of the work. By burying a needle in a needlestack, we render the original as much a forgery as any of our replications.”

Possibly Real Copies of ‘Fairies’ by Andy Warhol is as rebellious as it is slick. There are certainly art world stunts that that reek of little more than money-grabbing and faux-iconoclasts, but it feels as though a genuine desire drives this scheme. With every participant being a knowing party in agreement to the terms of a painting of questionable validity, there is truly nobody hurt in MSCHF’s use of the trappings of swindlers. In a very large way, they’ve elevated this piece into being more than a rough sketch by a famous name. They’ve translated into an idea speaking truth to the contexts by which these forgeries were snatched up, and have hopefully had some in the art world stop to think about the forces that drive this industry.

Member Spotlight: Flamboyan Foundation

November 01, 2021 by Call for Artists
Submitted by Carmen Graciela Díaz on November 1, 2021

For the month of November, GIA’s photo banner features work supported by Flamboyan Foundation.

This is the text Flamboyan Foundation submitted for this Spotlight:

Born from a groundbreaking partnership between the Flamboyan Foundation, Lin-Manuel Miranda and his family, and the Broadway musical Hamilton, the Flamboyan Arts Fund preserves, amplifies, and strengthens the arts in Puerto Rico. In just 3 years – and in response to the devastating effects of Hurricanes María and Irma – the Arts Fund has provided critical support to 541 artists and 106 arts organizations including museums, theaters, arts education programs, and concert venues to maintain the integrity of their programming, increase their visibility, and sustain their impact.

The Arts Fund has provided multi-year, unrestricted grants to arts and culture organizations around the island, totaling nearly $10 million dollars in grants. These organizations are pillars of Puerto Rico’s cultural heritage, and the grants have provided the funding and flexibility to ensure that they can continue their artistry and connecting with their communities.

While the Arts Fund continuously seeks new ways to support not only our grantees but the whole cultural ecosystem of the islands, three current projects really excite us: Letras Boricuas Fellowship, participatory grantmaking, and a shared services initiative.

Letras Boricuas
The Letras Boricuas Fellowship is a new opportunity sponsored by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and The Flamboyan Foundation’s Arts Fund, which provides 30 Boricua writers living in Puerto Rico or the United States— 15 selected in 2021 and 15 selected in 2022 — $25,000 each. Recipients will also participate in a gathering of all 30 Fellows to be hosted in San Juan, tentatively scheduled for April 2023.

While fellowship award funds are unrestricted, we hope to support writers in Puerto Rico and across the diaspora to pursue their writing, amplify their work to a broader audience, and create literature that celebrates Puerto Rican life and culture. Each Fellowship cohort will include writers of different genres and writers with experiences living both on and off the island but who share the bond of Puerto Rican identity. The first cohort will be announced in Fall 2021, with the fellowship running from January to December 2022. The second cohort will be announced in Fall 2022, with the fellowship running from January to December 2023.

Participatory Grantmaking
The Arts Fund has always incorporated feedback from arts organizations and artists in parts of the grantmaking process, and we are deepening our commitment to their voices by putting grantmaking decisions in their hands through participatory grantmaking. This type of grantmaking is not only more effective, but demonstrates a paradigm shift in how we work with our grantees as agents of change in their communities rather than simply beneficiaries of aid. This new initiative could set a precedent in Puerto Rico’s cultural sector by proposing an innovative and participatory shift toward funding. By documenting this process as a case study, we hope it will serve as a guide for those organizations who value collective participation and share the decision-making process with their constituents.

Shared Services
Arts organizations with limited financial resources often struggle to build the administrative and operational capabilities needed to reach sustainability and thrive. In addition, administrative tasks can take away from the time that arts leaders spend producing art and providing services to communities. In the El Nido Cultural initiative, Inversión Cultural and the Flamboyan Arts Fund have collaborated to launch an innovative shared services program for arts organizations in Puerto Rico. Through the shared services model, El Nido Cultural provides back-office services including accounting, human resources, legal, fundraising, and strategic planning. This type of support is game changing for organizations who will now have the internal structures and systems to build scale their work and deepen their artistic contributions to the field.

To know more about our work, please visit our website.

Flamboyan Foundation joined Grantmakers in the Arts in 2021.

You can also visit Flamboyan Foundation’s photo gallery on GIA’s Photo Credits page.

Image: Courtesy: Flamboyan Foundation

Every year ACirc summons dozens of street and circus artists to present the CircoFest in Puerto Rico: a two-day event that occupies various public spaces in the city for their performances. In the photo, one of the presentations taking place in the emblematic Plaza del Quinto Centenario in Old San Juan.

New Report Alert: The success of arts learning pods

October 29, 2021 by Call for Artists
Submitted by Carmen Graciela Díaz on October 29, 2021

Frances Phillips reviews research about an arts education program the Walter & Elise Haas Foundation participated in over the past year responding to the idea of Emily Garvie from the Clarence E. Heller Charitable Foundation “of organizing arts nonprofits to lead subsidized pods for students who lacked access to consistent arts learning and schoolwork support.”

Phillips states:

Ultimately, arts organizations and youth development agencies joined to launch and sustain arts pods at ten sites in San Francisco, from September 2020 through the summer of 2021. By the end, the Walter & Elise Haas Fund had awarded $954,600 to support of this work — money specially allocated from the foundation’s endowment so as not to reduce regular program budgets. To evaluate the project’s success, we commissioned Social Policy Research Associates (SPR) to look at enrollment data, survey students and parents, facilitate focus group conversations, and prepare case studies.

Read here.

ICYMI: NPN’s Take Notice Fund Announces Inaugural Awardees: Supporting Louisiana’s artists and culture bearers of color

October 26, 2021 by Call for Artists
Submitted by Nadia Elokdah on October 26, 2021

National Performance Network (NPN) recently announced inaugural awardees of the Take Notice Fund, a pilot program awarding $5,000 grants to artists and culture bearers of color living and working throughout Louisiana whose bodies of work represent excellence, dedication to their practices, and contributions to this country’s discourse about racial equity and cultural preservation.

The initiative is supported with generous funding from the Ford Foundation’s Creativity and Free Expression program. “This fund has introduced me to artists who I will continue to follow,” says NPN’s Director of Local Programs Stephanie Atkins. “Take Notice definitely means what it says—stop and take notice of the work being done in this state by BIPOC artists. Louisiana has a strong base of creatives. It’s also an art capital.”

Read about the 2021 awardees here.

ICYMI: 3Arts awards nearly $1 million dollars to women artists, artists of color, and Deaf and disabled artists

October 25, 2021 by Call for Artists
Submitted by Carmen Graciela Díaz on October 25, 2021

3Arts, the Chicago-based nonprofit grantmaking organization, recently expanded funding in response to increasingly stringent times for women artists, artists of color, and Deaf and disabled artists.

The organization will award Chicago artists with nearly $1 million in unrestricted cash grants during the 14th annual 3Arts Awards, taking place virtually on Monday, November 1.

Read more here.

Ai-Da the artist robot and AI’s place in art

October 24, 2021 by Call for Artists

Artificial intelligence has been a part of our regular life for decades now. While there is still an air of the technological future to it and a wealth of detractors and those who fear its influence, it has already integrated into our society. And as it has also intermingled with artistic practices for some time now, projects combining the two realms are not a surprising thing to hear of touring internationally. What is surprising is seeing artist-robot Ai-Da detained at the Egyptian border upon suspicion of espionage.

 

Ai-Da, named for mathematician and pioneering computer programmer Ada Lovelace, is an android created by English gallerist Aidan Meller and Cornish robotic company Engineered Arts. Equipped with two cameras for eyes and a bionic arm capable of fine motoric tasks such as drawing, the robot is well equipped for fine arts and her AI is programmed for sketching, painting, and even sculpting. Ai-Da has wowed the world with her ability to draw representations of people and scenes she views and has been part of the ongoing debate of AI’s place in artistic practices.

 

A sample of Ai-Da’s art; courtesy of Ai-Da Robot.

 

She was en route to a momentous exhibition—the first modern art presentation ever at the Pyramid of Giza—when the robot was detained by security at the airport. The customs officers had deemed Ai-Da a potential threat to Egyptian intelligence and had even contemplated removing the robot’s eyes, a fundamental part of her form, in order to ensure their aims. The event was heated and grew quickly in scale with a U.K. ambassador stepping in to attempt to get Ai-Da cleared in time for the exhibition.

 

While the matter has been cleared with Ai-Da being released—intact—for the event at Giza, and the concerns of the creations use as anything beyond that of artistic endeavours, fundamental questions to the existence of AI-driven art and robotic artists are still swirling. 

 

To what extent is an AI a tool, and to what extent is an artist? As we begin to see more and more nuanced and intricate forms of intelligence exhibited by self-motivated and learning artificial intelligences, in what ways do we see them as autonomous entities with opinions, agency, and rights of their own? Are their works their own, or the works of those that programmed them such that they could and would create? 

 

The question is further complicated when it comes to human intervention in the pieces created; a deal of the art created by her algorithms is then taken and filled in or “finished” by human hands, the extent to which they intervene is ambiguous. It feels disingenuous to claim art as the property of an AI in any flag-waving form of innovative utility if the core of the experience is from a human hand and heart. But it isn’t unfair to state that an intelligence, artificial or not, using thought processes or algorithms contained within that intelligence to make art, holds claim to that which it creates. It doesn’t seem we’re quite at the stage of AIs truly creating feelings and genuine autonomy for themselves, but factoring those additional layers to the question, it becomes all the more complicated and strangely meaningful.

 

Aidan Meller has stated that the intent of Ai-Da was never to make “good” art, but that this artful AI, with its capability to create, was the goal. Whether people enjoyed or appreciated was entirely secondary. And in that case, it is hard to argue with him that he has succeeded in his endeavour. While there is a lot of spectacle to Ai-Da and how she is exhibited, it is also a milestone in techno-art fusion to see the capabilities of this robotic creator. In many ways, the once far distant dreamed future is here. But the question still is, what does it mean for the art world we know?

The Mosaic Network and Fund Funder Learning Intensive

October 21, 2021 by Call for Artists
Submitted by Carmen Graciela Díaz on October 21, 2021

The Mosaic Network and Fund Funder Learning Intensive 2021-2022, a one-year online learning intensive aimed at supporting a cohort of up to 100 New York City-based arts funders in their efforts to normalize racial justice concepts and implement racial equity practices at their organizations, is seeking participants.

To participate, register here by October 27, 2021 at 5pm Eastern Time. More details here.