Displaying items by tag: grants

Major grants to fund renovations Springfield - The Springfield Museums have received two major grants to fund exterior renovations to the William Pynchon Memorial Building (formerly known as the Connecticut Valley Historical Museum).

Through $120,000 from the Cultural Facilities Fund of the Massachusetts Cultural Council and another $50,000 from The Beveridge Family Foundation, Inc., the museums will be able to repair and restore the building's slate roof, replace its gutters, rebuild its shutters and dormers, and paint the building in accordance with historical preservation standards. Renovations to the building have already commenced, with completion targeted for the spring of 2015.

 Los Angeles’ Getty Foundation has launched a philanthropic initiative to conserve some of the world’s most iconic examples of modern architecture. Keeping It Modern will help preserve these architectural gems through grants ranging from $50,000 to $200,000. The initial ten projects that have been selected to receive funding are Jørn Utzon’s Sydney Opera House in Australia; Hilario Candela’s Miami Marine Stadium in Florida; Louis Kahn’s Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California; Alvar Aalto’s Paimio Sanatorium in Finland; Frank Lloyd Wright’s Robie House in Chicago; Ray and Charles Eameses’ residence ‘The Eames House’ in Los Angeles; I.M. Pei’s Luce Memorial Chapel in Taiwan; Max Berg’s Centennial Hall in Wrocław, Poland; Dov Karmi’s Max Liebling House in Tel Aviv; and Le Corbusier’s apartment and studio in Paris.

Keeping It Modern will address the considerable challenges involved with the conservation of modern architecture.

Bloomberg Philanthropies, the nonprofit founded by former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg, announced that it is expanding its funding for cultural institutions’ digital projects. The foundation is committing $17 million to six museums to help increase visitor engagement and education through innovative technology tools. The recipients of the expanded grant program are the American Museum of Natural History (New York), the Brooklyn Museum (New York), the Cooper-Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum (New York), the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Gardens by the Bay (Singapore), and the Science Museum (London).   

The latest round of funding will support a spate of new technologies.

Christopher Bedford, director of the Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University, has announced two major grants, both for $100,000, from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

The Warhol Foundation grant will support the exhibition “Lisa Yuskavage: The Brood,” opening in September 2015. The Mellon Foundation grant will support three years of programming triggered by the hiring of a Curator of Academic Projects, an innovative position specifically designed to integrate the Rose’s collections and programs into teaching and learning at the university, according to Brandeis.

This is the first time that the Rose Art Museum has received a grant from either foundation.

The New York artist Andres Serrano has awakened fresh controversy with his 1987 work "Piss Christ," which famously sparked a culture war in the US that led to the end of NEA grants to individual artists. Around 50 protesters gathered yesterday, 26 August, outside the Musée Fesch in Ajaccio, Corsica, to demand the immediate removal of the photograph from an exhibition of 120 works by the artist.

A member of the Catholic organization Cristiani Corsi told France TV Info that the protest aimed to have the work removed from the museum and returned to the Lambert Collection in Avignon, which co-organized the exhibition. “[Corsica] is soiled by the presence of this picture. It’s an insult to every Corsican,” he said.

Today, American Express and World Monuments Fund (WMF) announced $1.5 million in grant funding to support preservation efforts at nine historic sites. This is the second allocation from a $5 million, five-year grant to WMF from American Express to support the World Monuments Watch. Each of the nine locations was among the at-risk historic sites included on the 2014 Watch, announced in October 2013. American Express is founding sponsor of the Watch program.

Projects receiving funding are Pokfulam Village in Hong Kong (SAR), China; the churches of Saint Merri and Notre-Dame-de-Lorette in Paris, France; the Farnese Aviaries in Rome, Italy; Tenyuji Temple, Ogatsu, Japan; Fundidora Park in Monterrey, Mexico; the Güell Pavilions in Barcelona, Spain; the House of Wonders in Stone Town, Zanzibar, Tanzania; Battersea Power Station in London, United Kingdom; and Sulgrave Manor in Sulgrave, United Kingdom.

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel has announced plans for an international architecture exhibition that will take place in the city in late 2015. Modeled after Italy’s prestigious Venice Architecture Biennale, officials hope that the Chicago Architecture Biennial will boost tourism and help develop the city’s reputation as a progressive design center.

The inaugural Chicago Architecture Biennial will be co-curated by Sarah Herda, director of the Graham Foundation, which provides project-based grants to individuals and organizations and supports architecture’s role in the arts, culture, and society, and Joseph Grima, former editor-in-chief of the architecture and design magazine, Domus. Grima previously co-curated the 2012 Istanbul Design Biennial. Herda and Grima will develop the Biennial’s program with help from a swath of influential architects including, David Adjaye, Elizabeth Diller, Frank Gehry, Jeanne Gang, and Stanley Tigerman, as well as curator Hans-Ulrich Obrist and Pritzker Prize Jury Chair Peter Palumbo. The team will draw inspiration from Chicago’s rich architectural landscape, which includes buildings by Frank Lloyd Wright, Mies van der Rohe, and Louis Sullivan.

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 Walters Art Museum announced Monday that it's been awarded $913,000 in grants to support renovations and exhibitions at the museum, including a special show on Islamic art scheduled to open next year.

That sum is made up of six individual donations — four from government agencies and two from private foundations — Walters spokeswoman Mona Rock said in a news release.

The bulk of the money, $500,000 will be used to support "Pearls on a String: Art and Relationship in the Islamic World," which is scheduled to open in the fall of 2015.

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) has offered to acquire L.A.’s struggling Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA). MOCA has been at the center of a number of controversies after the museum’s chief curator, Paul Schimmel, left the institution in June 2012 after 22 years on the job. Critics have bashed the museum for becoming too celebrity focused and all of the artists who once served on the museum’s board including John Baldessari (b. 1931), Barbara Kruger (b. 1945), and Ed Ruscha (b. 1937), have resigned after disagreeing with the institution’s new direction.

LACMA Director, Michael Govan, offered to raise $100 million for MOCA’s two locations in exchange for the acquisition. LACMA made a similar offer to MOCA, which is currently helmed by former New York gallery owner Jeffrey Deitch, back in 2008. LACMA officials believe that the merger would strengthen both institutions and provide MOCA with stability and strong leadership.

MOCA’s contributions, grants, and operating profits have all declined in recent years.