Displaying items by tag: funding

Oslo’s city council approved a plan for a new Munch Museum on the waterfront in a vote on 22 October. A new building designed by the architecture firm Herreros will be constructed at a cost of 2.8m Norwegian kroner. A few weeks ago, the national government announced that it would support the project with 605m kroner of funding; the city had originally asked for 920m kroner, so it will have to make up for the difference elsewhere. A vote on the zoning is still due to take place in November.

The long-delayed project has hit a number of political hurdles since the architects were first chosen in a competition in 2009.

A total of 23 libraries and museums across the UK will be able to add to their core collections with a £5m grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF).

The financial boost will enable the institutions to "go shopping" for new artifacts over a five-year period.

Among the projects to benefit from the cash is one to develop a collection on Polar explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton.

The Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art marks its 20th anniversary this year, but the celebration is bittersweet.

R. Crosby Kemper, the banker and civic leader who put the museum in motion with co-founder Bebe Kemper, died eight months ago, raising questions in the arts community about the museum’s future. Is there funding — and a commitment from his children — for the museum to continue?

“We have no thought of closing,” said Mary Kemper Wolf, an accomplished filmmaker who is the daughter of Crosby and Bebe Kemper (now a trustee emeritus).

The Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center announced on Tuesday afternoon, Sept 2, that it has received a $646,685 grant from the Windgate Charitable Foundation.

The award places the 20-year-old nonprofit museum among a growing list of Western North Carolina art-and-craft institutions that have received funding from the Siloam Springs, Ark.-based organization. In the past year. the foundation has awarded over $5 million in capitol projects, funding and programming grants to Warren Wilson College, The Center for Craft, Creativity and Design and the Penland School of Craft, among others.

“The grant marks the next stage in our development,” says Dr. J. Richard Gruber, board chair for the museum.

The Massachusetts State Legislature is expected to vote this summer on a measure to fund a huge expansion at New England arts institution MASS MoCA.

Adding about 150,000 square foot of usable capacity, the expansion “would create a large quarter-mile-long figure-8 [shaped] layout—essentially double our exhibition space,” said longtime director Joseph Thompson in an interview with artnet News. The $25.4 million grant, in tandem with private monies already partly raised, would allow the Berkshires cultural institution to renovate more of its existing 26-building campus. The expansion would “open up a much more gracious circulation for the museum,” noted Thompson.

The measure has already passed several hurdles in the legislature, and museum staffers deem passage likely.

New York City is allocating another $23 million for arts education in the upcoming school year.

Mayor Bill de Blasio, Comptroller Scott Stringer and Schools Chancellor Carmen Farina said Tuesday the city will hire another 120 arts teachers.

It also will rehabilitate dilapidated arts facilities in dozens of schools.

The funding is part of the budget approved by the City Council last week. It covers fiscal year 2015, which began Monday.

Earlier this year, the Institute of Contemporary Art got disappointing news: It would no longer be in charge of painting the massive Dewey Square wall mural, at the head of the Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway. The job would instead go to the more mainstream Museum of Fine Arts.

Jill Medvedow, ICA director, was not pleased. “Really?” she said. “It’s walking distance to the ICA.”

Other Greenway changes, perhaps more universally welcomed, are in the works. On Wednesday the nonprofit funder ArtPlace will announce a $250,000 public art grant for the Greenway, a 15-acre network of parks in downtown Boston. That follows by just a few days the announcement of plans for a $1 million public art expansion that will include the installation next year of a huge, billowing fabric work meant to hover over the park, by Brookline-based artist Janet Echelman. The Greenway is even hiring its own art curator.

The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden has named Melissa Chiu, veteran director and senior vice president for global arts and cultural programs for the Asia Society Museum in New York, as its new director.

The Australian-born Chiu, 42, who will assume the position Sept. 29, succeeds former director Richard Koshalek, whose tenure was marked by controversy over funding for his signature Seasonal Inflatable Structure proposal. He announced his resignation a year ago.

The Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. announced that Oprah Winfrey will donate $12 million to support the capital campaign of the new National Museum of African American History and Culture. Winfrey donated $1 million in 2007, bringing her total contribution to the project to $13 million. She has been a member of the museum’s advisory council since 2004. To thank her for her generosity, the Smithsonian will name the museum’s 350-seat theater the Oprah Winfrey Theater.

The museum, which is currently under construction, is expected to cost $500 million by the time it reaches completion. Congressional funding provided half of the capital and the rest is being raised by the museum. The museum is situated on 5 acres of land and sits next to the Washington Monument. It will be the 19^th Smithsonian museum.

Wayne Clough, the Smithsonian Secretary, said, “At its heart, the National Museum of African History and Culture is a showcase for a richer, fuller picture of the American experience. The Oprah Winfrey Theater will bring untold stories alive through films, performances, artistic expression and public dialogue.”

The National Museum of African American History and Culture is slated to open in late 2015.

On June 10, 2013, Bank of America announced the recipients of its 2013 Art Conservation Project. The program provides grant funding to international nonprofit museums to conserve historically and culturally significant works of art that are in danger of deterioration.

This year, Bank of America’s Art Conservation Project will provide funding for 24 works in 16 countries. One of the most significant undertakings is the restoration of Simon Rodia’s Watts Towers in Los Angeles. Built between 1921 and 1953, the Watts Towers are an iconic part of the city and have fallen into disrepair. The towers are part of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Other projects include the restoration of Jackson Pollock’s (1912-1956) Number 1A, One, and Echo at the Museum of Modern Art; 13 mural drawings by Diego Rivera (1886-1957) at the Detroit Institute of Arts; four Tudor paintings at the National Portrait Gallery in London; a Rembrandt (1606-1669) study at the National Gallery in Prague; and a Frida Kahlo (1907-1954) photography collection at La Casa Azul in Mexico.    

Bank of America launched its Art Conservation Project in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa in 2010. It was expanded to include the Americas, Asia, and Australia in 2012. Including this year’s recipients, Bank of America will have funded the conservation of 57 projects in 25 countries.