The Andy Warhol Foundation Is Expanding Its National Reach

Michael Rakowitz, “A Color Removed” (2018), community event in honor of Ms. Samaria Rice & the Tamir Rice Foundation (image courtesy SPACES)

Wednesday, December 12, 2018

Press coverage publication: 

Hyperallergic

Body: 

The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts is expanding its Regional Regranting Program to Cleveland and Denver and will bring back Baltimore’s program, the Grit Fund, which took a one-year hiatus. The roster of the program is positioned to distribute $1.4 million to organizations for approximately $840,000 in yearly grants for artist-driven projects across 14 cities. The nonprofit arts organizations SPACES (Cleveland), RedLine (Denver), and Baltimore Arts Realty Corp (BARCO) will administer grants respectively.

SPACES’s Satellite Fund will offer ten $6,000 project-based grants to artists in Cuyahoga County; RedLine’s INSITE Fund will award 10 to 15 grants of up to $5,000 each to artists and arts collectives in the Denver Metro area; and BARCO’s Grit Fund will provide 9 to 12 awards of up to $7,000 each for Baltimore-based projects. Each regranting organization will receive funding for program administration and outreach in addition to the artist and project grants.

As Joel Wachs, president of the Andy Warhol Foundation, explained to Hyperallergic, the Regional Regranting program developed when the Foundation observed incredible creative communities operating under the radar without any traditional funding mechanisms. “It can be someone doing exciting things in their garage on a Sunday or a collaborative that wants to complete their project. We found them all over and asked how can we reach that person?”

The program started in 2007 in San Francisco with Southern Exposure acting as administrator of the grants. The next year the program extended to Houston. The Regional Regranting program has awarded $6.4 million in grants, which has resulted in $3.6 million in direct support of 848 artist projects to date through organizations in Albuquerque, Baltimore, Chicago, Cleveland, Denver, Houston, Kansas City, Miami, Minneapolis, New Orleans, Philadelphia, Portland (OR), Portland (ME), and San Francisco. According to Wachs, the aim is to expand the grants geographically. “My goal is a program in 50 states,” he said. “To do that we would need more money and partners in each state capable of administering that program.”

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Press coverage author: 

Kealy Boyd