A Blade of Grass is a New York City-based organization that supports socially engaged artists nationally through fellowships, public programs and efforts to expand the discourse around their work. Founded eight years ago as the term “socially engaged art” was coming into common usage, though without a lot of consensus around its exact meaning, A Blade of Grass has worked hard to create a context for the disparate practices that flourish at the intersection of art, community and social justice and to raise the visibility of this work in the art world and beyond.
A Blade of Grass
Guests plant flowers chosen by incarcerated mothers in A Blade of Grass Fellow jackie sumell’s cell-sized garden bed as part of “What It Takes to Be Free: Artists Respond to the Criminal Justice System,” an A Blade of Grass event at the Lower East Side Girls Club, New York. Photo by Chris Green.
Jury members are sworn in during "I Speak for the Trees: A Mock Trial," an A Blade of Grass event that tested whether art copyright law could be used to legally halt construction of a natural gas pipeline, as proposed by A Blade of Grass Fellow Aviva Rahmani. Photo courtesy of RAVA Films.
“It is an honor to be part of The Warhol Foundation’s mission to support the visual arts coupled with its commitment to specifically support the voices of women, POC, Native Americans, and LGBTQ. It is simply thrilling to be part of an organization where we get to see these values writ large and implement real change in real life ways in the visual arts community that still so needs to move forward in terms of social justice, equality, and diversity. We put our money where our mouth is. How many institutions actually do that?”
Deborah Kass, Artist