Submitted by Carmen Graciela Díaz on August 26, 2021
In a recent article, Next City tackled the concept of third places and “the importance of public space, separate from home or work, designed by and for Black people.”
Submitted by Carmen Graciela Díaz on August 26, 2021
Produced by the National Coalition for Arts’ Preparedness & Emergency Response (NCAPER) with support from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and a National Endowment for the Arts grant to South Arts, the administrative home of NCAPER, the “NCAPER Field Guide” aims to “demystify federal disaster relief for the arts and culture sector; it aims to help artists and organizations see what’s available, understand clearly what isn’t available, and decide if pursuing federal aid is a good use of time.”
Submitted by Carmen Graciela Díaz on August 23, 2021
The City of New York announced funding for a new cultural space to be built to serve as Pregones/Puerto Rican Traveling Theater’s headquarters. “With just over $3 million in new City funding added as part of this year’s capital budget, the project is now fully funded with $10.2 million in City support,” according to the press release.
Pregones/Puerto Rican Traveling Theater is a champion of Puerto Rican and Latinx cultural heritage.
Image: Courtesy of the City of New York
Aloha Boricua: Photo by Erika Rojas
Submitted by Carmen Graciela Díaz on August 23, 2021
Artists at Work, “a pilot that launched last summer in Western Massachusetts to pay artists a living wage — including healthcare — to collaborate with cultural organizations and local initiatives in creating work that responds to issues such as youth mental health, food justice and COVID awareness campaigns in marginalized communities,” is the center of a recent article in Next City.
Hybrid and fusion within artistic fields truly is the oncoming future. Through the blending of boundaries, varying art forms are able to merge to create new experiences beyond the sum of their parts. Visual arts, sound design, performance, literature, and film can all benefit greatly when recognized as units. And Lighthouse Immersive’s upcoming exhibition Touch is sure to be an exemplary display of this approach with their fusion of dance projection work.
Lighthouse Immersive is a Toronto based company that describes themselves as an “experiential entertainment multi-plex”, characterized by their programming that utilizes their physical space and digital projections alongside live performance. Immersive Van Gogh, which has been running for several years now, has been a widespread success that places audiences within the visuals of the iconic artist. Founded by producers Corey Ross and Svetlana Dvoretsky and developer Slava Zheleznyakov, Lighthouse Immersive has expanded into Chicago and San Francisco as well.
Touch, which was announced with an opening date of September 29th, is a poignant concept after over a year of physical distancing. Presenting at Lighthouse Immersive Gallery 2 designed by Guillaume Côté with a collaboration of the artists from Côté Danse and Thomas Payette, it combines modern dance and 360 projection design in an interactive form. Lighthouse Immersive states:
“We discover the lost meaning of touch by experiencing the visceral intimacy of physical contact through their longing, loving, confusion, frustration, pent-up rage, and the catharsis of expressing innermost feelings.”
Courtesy of Lighthouse Immersive.
If the production stills are any hint at what the full offering will be like, it is certain to be a breathtaking exhibition. While the use of lighting design in dance performances is by no means a groundbreaking feat—a norm at this point—the power that radiates between the boundary of the bodies and the expansiveness of the projections for Touch amplifies the shape and motion of these snapshots of movement beautifully.
Live exhibitions are making their plans for comeback in full force, and it’s a more than welcome return. The quality of this first wave of performances appears to have a thread of commonality in their care of intent, their focus on aspects that have been dearly missed by communities. Lighthouse Immersive’s Touch is a fitting step back into this realm of connection, and it is evident from the handful of preview materials alone that this will be an exhibition not to be missed.
Submitted by Carmen Graciela Díaz on August 16, 2021
In an essay published by the National Endowment for the Arts, Eleanor Savage discussed how the pandemic “has highlighted and amplified technology’s central place in every aspect of our daily lives” and “the vital role of artists in the development and shaping of social and cultural tools and in world-building through technology.”
In this piece, the program director at Jerome Foundation and GIA board member, lifts up one of the discussions at the 2020 GIA Convening.
Many future-facing conversations in the philanthropic sector are centering on arts and technology. Grantmakers in the Arts’ 2020 virtual convening, Power, Practice, Resilience Remix’d, opened with a visionary keynote featuring Ruha Benjamin, Salome Asega, and Sage Crump, all of whom are creatively engaged with technology, sciences, and cultural work. The conversation, titled “Building the Future We Want,” highlighted the big questions that technology-centered artists such as Sasha Constanza-Chock and so many others are asking around the use of technology and who has input into its design and implementation. (…) What this keynote conversation also raised was the issue of insufficient financial support for arts and technology, even in this moment when these artists, networks, and communities are creating vibrant new ways to construct experience and change narratives.
Submitted by Carmen Graciela Díaz on August 16, 2021
“We have to find business structures that meaningfully place people first and upend the practice of concentrating decision-making power and money in the hands of administrative leadership while undercompensating and disenfranchising the majority of workers,” wrote Arianna Gass and Daniel Park on a worker cooperative.
Submitted by Carmen Graciela Díaz on August 16, 2021
“Trust-based philanthropy encourages funders to adopt a set of values that include leading with trust, centering relationships, collaborating with humility and curiosity, redistributing power, and working for systemic equity,” wrote Melinda Tuan, managing director of Fund for Shared Insight, in a recent article published by the Center for Effective Philanthropy.
Tuan added,
It’s been a long time since I first started thinking about the grantmaking world’s dance of deceit, and I do believe things have improved since then. But I also believe that funders can and should change even more – diving more deeply and committedly into the kind of listening and feedback practices that advance equity and bring us closer to living out the meaningful and essential values at the heart of trust-based philanthropy.
The National Gallery of Canada has been on a positive trajectory over the last while. With a restructuring and rebranding of the gallery to integrate and highlight the works and culture of Indigenous artists, as well as receiving $900,000CAD in funding for future initiatives, it has been a bright year for the institution. And now the NGC is the recipient of a major donation in the form of the massive Meakins-McClaran collection, from a Montréal married couple.
Dr. Jonathan Meakins and Dr. Jacqueline McClaran, physicians in Montréal, had amassed quite the collection over the years. In fact, it was one of the largest private collections in all of Canada. The two had a wealth of artworks from Dutch and Flemish artists across the 16th and 17th centuries, among others, and 250 of the works from this near-forty-year collection have been given to the NGC.
An exhibition entitled The Collectors’ Cosmos, curated by member Erika Dolphin, opened on July 16th and will run until November 14th to display a large portion of the Meakins-McClaran collection. Dolphin has grouped the selections of prints, drawings, and etchings thematically rather than chronologically across this two-century span.
“The exhibition at the National Gallery of Canada will reveal both the strength and breadth of the collection today,” the gallery states of The Collectors’ Cosmos “as well as the collectors’ love of the etched and engraved line and plate tone.” As for Meakins and McClaran, they seem overjoyed to have their collection be shared with Canadian viewers, McClaran stating to the Ottawa Citizen:
“It’s wonderful to give a big gift and to see it exhibited, but also to do it in your own lifetime, and to contribute. We felt like curators ourselves.”
The Meakins-McClaran collection gives a new focussed depth to the works already acquired by the National Gallery of Canada. With it only just over half-way through, this has already been a milestone year for this institution of art in Canada. And with new initiatives just underway—including commissions from Indigenous artists Chief 7idansuu James Hart and Lisa Hageman Yahjujanaas—there is surely even more to come.
Submitted by admin on August 11, 2021
The Creative Economy Revitalization Act (CERA), a bill to authorize and appropriate a $300 million modern WPA/CETA program for creative workers, was recently submitted to the clerk in the House.
With over 140 endorsements, including organizations and arts leaders, at GIA we are looking forward to follow this bill to approval.