The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts has announced 49 arts organizations and museums that will receive over $4 million for its Spring 2023 grants program. Recognized for their visual arts programming, exhibitions, and research initiatives that provide critical support to artists, the grant recipients hail from 20 different states in the US, the District of Columbia, and include an organization in Mexico City and one in Stockholm.
“The Spring 2023 grantees have demonstrated admirable dedication to nurturing experimental artistic practice, providing artists with platforms from which to participate in critical cultural exchanges,” states Joel Wachs, President, “The Foundation’s support empowers institutions and the artists they serve to revisit and question accepted histories, highlight overlooked and underrepresented voices, and promote innovation and creativity.”
The Spring 2023 grantees include 19 first-time recipients whose programs support experimental art making, creative thinking, and community engagement. Stove Works (Chattanooga, TN) cultivates dialogue around and through contemporary art practices by hosting exhibitions, housing a residency program for local, national, and international artists, and providing a variety of resources such as production labs and professional development workshops; Express Newark (Newark, NJ) unites Rutgers University faculty, staff, and students with artists, critics and community peers to create art, learn collaboratively, and advocate for change; River Valley Arts Collective (Katonah, NY) works closely with area farmers, tribal members, and skilled craftspeople to teach artists sustainable and ethical ways of working with materials native to the region; and programs at Public Space One (Iowa City, IA) enable artists to conduct research, develop strategies for cultural activism, and make meaningful connections with peers from around the country and beyond.
Several grantees champion art making and creativity as valuable life-enhancing skills. First-time grantee Gather:Make:Shelter (Portland, OR), provides opportunities to build and hone artistic skills to the unhoused population of Portland while Los Angeles Poverty Department (Los Angeles, CA) located in the city’s Skid Row, co-creates performances, workshops, conversations, and publications about issues the unhoused community faces living in poverty on the street. First-time grantee NIAD Art Center (Richmond, CA) provides nurturing and supportive environments for artists with developmental and intellectual disabilities by designing programs with the artists that offer skills, experience, and independence, while fostering creativity.
Many grantees focus on the needs of artists to develop their creative processes, providing them with the time, space, and facilities to experiment and create while also connecting them to networks of mentors and other practitioners. Geared towards nurturing a vital yet under-recognized practice, Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts (Omaha, NE), launched a Sound Art + Experimental Music program that adds sound artists into its mix of residents. Abrons Arts Center – Henry Street Settlement, (New York, NY), supports artists working in different disciplines through its New York City-based residency program, while also offering an exchange in Puerto Rico and a parent residency that includes stipends for childcare. Grantees such as Lower Manhattan Cultural Center (New York, NY), The Luminary (St Louis, MO), McColl Center (Charlotte, NC), Redline (Denver, CO) and others are also known for their longstanding artist-centered approach.
As the country continues to grapple with polarizing debates around LQBTQ+ issues, several grantees focus on the needs of the community’s artists. New grantee BOFFO (New York, NY) brings a diverse group of emerging LGBTQ+ artists and scholars to engage with and contribute to the rich history of Fire Island, while the New Orleans Film Society (New Orleans, LA) is intentionally orienting its programming to support Southern BIPOC, women, and LGBTQ+ artists working in emerging digital and new media forms. The world’s only art museum dedicated to artistic exploration through queer perspectives, the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art (New York, NY) will reflect diverse LGBTQIA+ histories in exhibitions and programs that prioritize the creation of new work and foster connections between artists and audiences.
“Artists consistently push boundaries – material, cultural and political – as they navigate unsettled issues in and through their work” says Rachel Bers, Program Director, “Our grantees are attuned to evolving contemporary practices and provide artists with the necessary tools, connections and platforms to develop their creative process, share their perspectives, and make meaningful contributions to cultural conversations.”
18 museums, university art galleries, and art centers will receive grants in support of large-scale solo and group exhibitions that cover a range of timely topics. Several exhibitions will bring contemporary artists into dialogue with historical material to offer fresh perspectives on the past and the present. The Dia Art Foundation will present a project and symposium by Cameron Rowland that employs the organization’s own history of real estate and art acquisition as the basis for an exploration into the afterlife of slavery in contemporary property relations; the Institute for Contemporary Art at Virginia Commonwealth University will organize Dear Mazie, a group exhibition that looks at the history and legacy of pioneering architect, educator, and artist Amaza “Mazie” Lee Meredith by inviting contemporary artists and architects to make work in conversation with her archive of photos, blueprints, and teaching guides; The Center for Italian Modern Art will host a series of public discussions between curators, critics, and contemporary artists to illuminate the current day resonance of its exhibition Corrado Cagli: Undoing Fascism, Drawings 1938-1948, which will showcase works by the openly gay Jewish artist that addressed issues such as exile and diaspora, political and gender oppression, and racism, and The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Reclaiming Egypt will highlight artistic approaches to ancient Egypt dating from the nineteenth century to today, tracing the evolution of Egyptian iconography as an expression of Black Power and ancestral connection.
Contributions to the visual arts, both past and present, by Asian communities are being highlighted in several upcoming group exhibitions: Collaborative Cataloging Japan will organize Community of Images: Japanese Moving Image Artists in the US, 1960s and 1970s, an exhibition, screening series, and publication that will featuring the rediscovered, re-mastered, and re-created works by eight Japanese artists, highlighting the ways in which their experience of living in the States informed their creative practices. Scratching at the Moon, presented by the Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles is a group exhibition organized around an intergenerational group of thirteen Asian American Pacific Islander artists who live and work in Los Angeles and who are active in social justice movements. USC Pacific Asia Museum’s Another Beautiful Country: Moving Images by Chinese American Artists will feature the work of an intergenerational group of eleven artists whose work addresses a variety of issues including family dynamics, individual transformations, and personal stories from immigrants and ethnic minorities.
The Foundation’s additional grants include $190,000 to fund four curatorial research projects: a pilot program for a nomadic residency; an exploration of language-based art at the root of feminist practice; an in-depth look at the life and work of artist and ordained Buddhist priest Hirokazu Kosaka; and a project that seeks to complicate and radically expand the meaning of the category Asian American Art.
The complete list of Spring 2023 Grantees is as follows:
Spring 2023 Grant Recipients | Program Support Over Two Years
Abron’s Arts Center – Henry Street Settlement, New York, NY – $100,000
Art21, New York, NY – $100,000
Bemis Art Center for Contemporary Arts, Omaha, NE – $100,000
Boffo, New York, NY – $60,000
BOMB/New Art Publications, Inc, Brooklyn, NY – $100,000
Express Newark/Rutgers University Foundation, Newark, NJ – $80,000
Flux Projects, Atlanta, GA – $60,000
500 Capp Street Foundation, San Francisco, CA – $100,000
516 ARTS, Albuquerque, NM – $100,000
Gather:Make:Shelter, Portland, OR – $80,000
Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art, New York, NY – $100,000
Los Angeles Poverty Department, Los Angeles, CA – $100,000
Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, New York, NY – $100,000
The Luminary, St. Louis, MO – $100,000
McColl Center, Charlotte, NC – $100,000
New Orleans Film Society, New Orleans, LA – $100,000
NIAD Art Center, Richmond, CA – $60,000
Oregon Contemporary, Portland, OR – $100,000
Public Media Institute, Chicago, IL – $100,000
Public Space One, Iowa City, IA – $60,000
RedLine, Denver, CO – $100,000
River Valley Arts Collective, Katonah, NY – $80,000
Stove Works, Chattanooga, TN – $60,000
Swiss Institute/NY, New York, NY – $100,000
Visual Art Exchange, Raleigh, NC – $80,000
Vox Populi, Philadelphia, PA – $60,000
Spring 2023 Grant Recipients | Exhibition Support
Anchorage Museum, Anchorage, AK
DEW Line: Early Warning System – $75,000
Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, MD
Preoccupied: Indigenizing the Museum – $100,000
Burchfield Penney Art Center, Buffalo, NY
Wilhelmina Godfrey: I am what I am — $60,000
Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, PA
Widening the Lens: Photography, Ecology, and the Contemporary Landscape — $100,000
Center for Italian Modern Art, New York, NY
Corrado Cagli: Undoing Fascism — $60,000
Collaborative Cataloging Japan, Philadelphia, PA
Community of Images: Japanese Moving Images Artists in the US, 1960s & 1970s — $80,000
Dia Art Foundation, New York, NY
Cameron Rowland — $75,000
Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.
OSGEMEOS: Endless Story — $100,000
IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts, Santa Fe, NM
Exhibition program — $100,000
Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA
Scratching at the Moon — $80,000
Institute for Contemporary Art at Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA
Dear Mazie — $60,000
Krannert Art Museum/University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Champaign, IL
Millie Wilson: The Museum of Lesbian Dreams — $75,000
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Flight into Egypt: Black Artists and Ancient Egypt, 1876–Now — $100,000
Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Fort Worth, TX
Surrealism and Us: Caribbean and African Diasporic Artists since 1940 — $100,000
Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Sweden
Exhibition Support — $100,000
Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, WA
Joyce J. Scott: Walk a Mile in My Dreams — $100,000
Staten Island Museum, Staten Island, NY
Taking Care: The ‘Black Angels’ of Seaview Hospital — $75,000
USC Pacific Asia Museum, Pasadena, CA
Another Beautiful Country: Moving Images by Chinese American Artists — $60,000
Spring 2023 Grant Recipients | Curatorial Research Fellowships
The Bronx Museum of the Arts, Bronx, NY
Monika Fabijanska — $40,000
Japanese American Cultural and Community Center, Los Angeles, CA
Julie Lazar — $50,000
Jan Shrem and Maria Manetti Shrem Museum of Art/UC Davis, Davis, CA
Amy Sadao and Susette Min — $50,000
Terremoto, Mexico City, Mexico
Helena Lugo — $50,000
Institute for African Affairs (IAAA), Center for Black Visual Culture (CBVC)/New York University, New York, NY
Manthia Diawara, Rebecca McGrew, and Terri Geis – $50,000.00
