Displaying items by tag: grant

Thomas P. Campbell, Director and CEO of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, announced that Adrienne Arsht has pledged $1 million in support of the Met Museum Presents series of performances and talk, now in its second season. The grant will fund the next three seasons of the series, in 2014-2015, 2015-2016, and 2016-2017.

“For years, Adrienne Arsht has been a philanthropic force in the performing arts,” said Mr. Campbell, “and her generous grant to the Metropolitan Museum signals her confidence in the bold direction that our Concerts & Lectures General Manager Limor Tomer has embraced over the past two years. Adrienne’s support will encourage the growth of this ground-breaking programming as Limor mines our collections, collaborates with our curators, and takes creative risks to bring a fresh perspective to the Museum. We are grateful to Adrienne for her vision and generosity in making this possible.”

Bard College’s Center for Curatorial Studies and Human Rights has launched its Keith Haring Fellowship in Art and Activism thanks to a $400,000 grant from the Keith Haring Foundation. The Fellowship is a cross-disciplinary, annual, visiting Fellowship for a scholar, activist or artist to teach and conduct research at the Center for Curatorial Studies and the Human Rights Project at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York. The recipient will investigate the role of art as a catalyst for social change and present original research in an annual lecture. The findings will be published and distributed among colleges and universities worldwide.

Julia Gruen, Executive Director of the Keith Haring Foundation, said, “We are honored to establish this dynamic fellowship at Bard College in Keith Haring’s name. The artist as activist was a role integral to Haring’s own vision, identity and practice, and we are confident that a fellowship dedicated to this approach can produce illuminating opportunities for discourse and scholarship.” Haring, an American artist and social activist who succumbed to AIDS in 1990, often raised political questions about HIV/AIDS and gay identity through his work. Through his activism, Haring helped the mainstream understand the AIDS crisis as a human rights issue rather than an affliction faced by a specific community.

Bard College will begin accepting applications for the Keith Haring Fellowship in February. The first Fellow will be announced in the spring of 2014.

The Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, England has acquired ‘Venice: The Fondamenta Nuove with the Lagoon and the Island of San Michele’ by Venetian painter Francesco Guardi. The museum acquired the rarely seen work under the Acceptance in Lieu of Inheritance scheme, which allows inheritance tax debts to be written off in exchange for the acquisition of objects of national importance. The Guardi painting cleared a bill of nearly £2 million. A grant from the Art Fund and contributions in memory of Jo Wilson and the Sir Denis Mahon Charitable Trust helped make up the difference in value, allowing the Ashmolean to acquire the work.

Guardi, who was born into a family of Venetian painters, is best known for his views of the city, which were especially popular with British tourists visiting Italy. Created for a British Grand Tourist, ‘Venice: The Fondamenta Nuove with the Lagoon and the Island of San Michele’ is one of Guardi’s early lagoon views illustrating the northern shore of Venice, the island of San Michele, and distant snow-capped mountains, which are rarely visible from the mainland.

Professor Christopher Brown CBE, Director of the Ashmolean, said, “This painting brings to the Ashmolean a poetic masterpiece in which Francesco Guardi reveals his full artistic potential. As the first major Venetian view-painting to enter the Museum’s collection it makes an inspirational addition to the Britain and Italy Gallery. We are profoundly grateful to the Arts Council, the Art Fund, and other supporters for making this acquisition possible.”

The Amon Carter Museum of American Art in Fort Worth, TX has received a $70,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts to support the exhibition ‘Navigating the West: George Caleb Bingham and the River.’ Andrew J. Walker, the museum’s director, said, “Receiving this prestigious NEA grant is certainly an honor. The support will help us create an exhibition that engages and resonates with our diverse audiences.”

George Caleb Bingham, who captured American life in the frontier lands along the Missouri River in the Luminist style, was relatively unknown until his art was rediscovered in the 1930s.‘Navigating the West’ brings together 17 river paintings and nearly 40 drawings that collectively tell the story of how Bingham created his art and artistic persona during a time when American painting, as well as the country, was rapidly changing.

‘Navigating the West’ will be on view at the Amon Carter Museum from October 2, 2014 through January 18, 2015. 

On December 18, the Philadelphia Museum of Art announced that it had successfully completed a five-year, $54 million campaign to endow 29 staff positions across the institution’s full range of operational departments. The campaign began in 2008 after the museum received a $27 million grant from H.F. “Gerry” Lenfest, then chairman of the institution’s board of trustees, and his wife, Marguerite. The campaign challenged donors to match the grant, million for million, in exchange for the right to endow and name the positions.

The Lenfests, who have donated over $100 million to the Philadelphia Museum of Art to date, are the institution’s largest financial donors. Their challenge was met by 27 donors, 19 of whom are making their first gift of such magnitude.

The Philadelphia Museum of Art’s endowment now totals $408 million.     

The Heritage Lottery Fund has given a $240,000 development grant to National Museums Liverpool to renovate the Lady Lever Art Gallery, which houses one of the UK’s finest collections of fine and decorative art. Renovation plans include returning over a quarter of the existing space to its original architecture and expanding galleries so that more of the collection can be made accessible to the public.

Sandra Penketh, the Gallery’s directory, said, “This project will transform the Gallery and breathe new life into the collections. It will also mean improved accessibility for visitors and greater educational resources for local schools and the community.” The Gallery’s initial grant allows it two years to submit a proposal for a more substantial bequest, which will ideally help them get closer to their £2.8 million fundraising goal.    

Founded in 1922 by the soap magnate William Lever, 1^st Viscount Leverhulme in honor of his late wife, the Lady Lever Art Gallery holds an outstanding collection of 18^th and 19^th century British paintings and furniture as well as a celebrated collection of Wedgwood pottery.

The Art Institute of Chicago has received a $1 million grant to fund a five-year partnership with the Chicago Public Schools. The goal of the collaboration is to foster students’ engagement with original artworks. Made possible by a gift from Cari and Michael J. Sacks to the Institute’s Department of Museum Education, TEAM: Thinking Experience in an Art Museum, will encourage critical and creative thinking in the city’s public schools.

Michael Sacks, a longtime trustee of the Institute, is chairman/CEO of Grosvenor Capital Management. Sacks and his wife, Carin, have made other generous donations in the past including a $5 million gift to Northwestern University back in August. The Sacks’ said, “We are committed to providing support for Chicago Public School students and want to share our love of art by making the museum’s wonderful collection accessible to all.”

TEAM was developed by Art Institute educators and Chicago Public School teachers and will include implementing curricula based on original works of art and tours and engagement with the museum. Educator training and direct classroom support will be part of the initiative, which will take place over the course of a two-year cycle.  

The Delaware Art Museum received a $130,000 Museums of America grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS). The grant will help fund a two-year Collections Stewardship project, which will make over 5,000 works on paper from the museum’s collection available to the public through a new searchable digital database.

In June 2013 the Delaware Art Museum received funding from the Welfare Foundation to begin a five-phase Collections Accessibility Plan. The recent IMLS grant will fund the second phase of the initiative. The institution plans to have most of its collection available online by 2018. The goal of the project is to reinforce the Delaware Art Museum’s mission “to connect people to art.” The Delaware Art Museum boasts a large collection and one of the most comprehensive groupings of Pre-Raphaelite art outside of the United Kingdom.

Margaretta Frederick, Chief Curator and Curator of the Bancroft Collection of Pre-Raphaelite Art, said, “This is an incredible opportunity for the Museum. Putting the collection online allows us to serve our diverse audiences more effectively through expanded access to collections-related information, images, and scholarship.”

The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation will grant the Smithsonian’s Freer and Sackler Galleries $1 million to help conserve Chinese paintings housed in the museum’s galleries of Asian art. The Smithsonian says that it is the only institution in the United States to offer a program that teaches conservators how to care for fragile Chinese paintings. The new grant will endow a position for an assistant Chinese painting conservator to provide support for the program.

While there are thousands of delicate Chinese paintings in American museums, there are only four expert conservators. Smithsonian officials said that the number of experts trained to care for Chinese paintings is dwindling, which is troublesome as these works are challenging to care for. Many Chinese paintings are very old and made up of layers of varying materials including paper, silk, fabric and paste, which all require different preservation methods.

The Mellon grant requires that the Smithsonian match the funds with an additional $750,000 by 2016 in order to endow the position.

In an attempt to attract visitors from outside the region, a number of Pittsburgh institutions have embarked on a joint endeavor called the Pittsburgh Art and Architecture Tour. The Andy Warhol Museum, the Mattress Factory Art Museum and two seminal residences designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, Fallingwater and Kentucky Knob, make up the tour.

The arrangement was made possible by a planning grant from the Pittsburgh-based Benter Foundation, an organization aimed at making the city more culturally and socially vibrant. The Warhol Museum’s Director, Eric Shiner, said, “We are very excited about this collaborative effort to increase cultural tourism to the Pittsburgh region.”

The Pittsburgh Art and Architecture Tour’s website, www.pghtrip.org, offers sample itineraries by car, air and public transportation that include the best places to stay, eat and visit while in the area.