VIA Art Fund

Congratulations to 2023 VIA Grantee Chakaia Booker and Curated Storefront on this feature on Booker's recently announced commission for Lock 3 Park in Akron, Ohio. During the commission’s November meeting, Daniel Rice of the?Ohio & Erie Canalway Coalition?and Annie Wischmeyer of?Curated Storefront?emphasized how Booker’s environmentally focused work aligns with Akron’s industrial heritage and the city’s tradition of innovation and creativity. Read the full article below to learn about the Akron Public Art commission and the artist's vision for this upcoming project, supported by VIA Art Fund. https://lnkd.in/gDJagXCR

"Inner Circle," a video profiling 2023 VIA Grantee Howardena Pindell, has just been released online to the public by 2016 VIA | Wagner Grantee Art21. Congratulations to the artist and Art21 on this wonderful feature. The video, available now on Art21's website, shares the artist's long standing practice using the?language of abstraction while struggling against a racist and misogynistic culture. “When you work with abstraction you’re working with your own intuitive feelings about space, color, line, shape,” says Pindell. “Its purpose is almost a way of opening up our thought process because you’re reading someone else’s language and you’re interpreting it through your own language.” Pindell was awarded a VIA grant in Artistic Production for the production and acquisition of her new commission by??Landmarks, the public art program of The University of Texas at Austin.?Pindell will create an architectural glass fa?ade integrated into the main entryway of the George L. Sanchez Building at The University of Texas at Austin.In 2016, Art21 was awarded a VIA | Wagner Incubator grant in support of the organization's?documentary series, "New York Close Up." Watch the full video now here: https://lnkd.in/gsrQnkgv

VIA Art Fund has been featured in?the Observer! Board member, early VIA advocate, and art advisor Molly Epstein shares insights into the significance of supporting artistic production, one of VIA's three core mission values. This piece?emphasizes the impact of VIA as a philanthropic organization on artists through direct support. The article also features several exciting VIA-supported projects, such as Cannupa Hanska Luger's?project now on view at the Hammer Museum in LA as part of the exhibition "Breath(e): Toward Climate and Social Justice," as well as Nicole Eisenman's monumental crane coming to Madison Square Park. Read the full article now! https://lnkd.in/eWeajDaT

VIA Art Fund is now accepting applications for our Spring 2025 Artistic Production Grants! November 4th is the deadline to submit a Letter of Inquiry. ? VIA Artistic Production grants are awarded to artists, nonprofit organizations, and institutions to support new artistic commissions outside museum or gallery walls, within the public realm, or in non-traditional exhibition environments. Individual artists or producing organizations seeking funding must have a confirmed exhibition venue or presenting partner. Artistic Production funding ranges from $25,000 to $100,000 per project. Artistic Production Grants are awarded to projects that best exemplify our core values of Artistic Production, Thought Leadership, and Public Engagement. To find out more, please our website viaartfund.org to review our LOI Guidelines and apply!

#Repost @warholfoundation VIA celebrates the very creative new initiative by our colleagues at the Warhol Foundation, The Philanthropy Factory: Benefiting Warhol Foundation Grantees! Please check it out because the online benefit art sale ends tomorrow! This initiative provides an opportunity for recent Warhol Foundation grantees to benefit from the sale of Warhol works from the Foundation’s collection. Of these participants, nine are past VIA Grantees! Congratulations to 516 ARTS (2023), the Anchorage Museum (2020), Antenna: New Orleans (2017), Art 21 (2017), the Baltimore Museum of Art (2024), Coleman Center for the Arts (2019), Dia Art Foundation (2015, 2017, 2023), the Hammer Museum (2023), and Locus Projects (2020). Select Warhol works ranging in value from $250 to $20,000 are now available for immediate purchase on a first-come first-serve basis for a limited time on the Foundation’s?eBay for Charity platform,?with all proceeds going directly to grantees. The sale runs through August 20th. #WarholFoundation?#AndyWarhol?#Warhol?#Philanthropy?#eBay?#eBayforCharity?@eBay?@matchfireauctions?#Portrait?#poster?#Photography?#Blackandwhitephotography?#selfportrait?#selfie?#Offsetlithograph?#Lithograph?#print?#wrappingpaper?#ArtCollector?#Collector?#Photocollector?#postercolletor?#ArtSale?#Benefit?#Art?#Artist #VIAArtFund #VIAGrantees #bestcolleagues #innovation #congratulations

Declaration House from Monument Lab featured in The Guardian! “Here’s this building built to mark where Thomas Jefferson drafted the Declaration of Independence and now it is filled with these inhabitants...Now, it’s full again, and their eyes are watchful of what we’re doing with the business of freedom and unfreedom.” –Sonya Y. Clark National Park Service Thomas Jefferson Foundation The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage VIA Art Fund National Endowment for the Arts Andrew M. Davenport Niya Bates Yolanda Wisher Anna Arabindan-Kesson Florie Hutchinson https://lnkd.in/eWRpCwvY

“I am elated about the 2024 VIA Art Fund awardees and thrilled to support artists working with these sterling arts and cultural institutions. Across each project, the awardees interrogate complicated pasts, parse the potentialities of contemporary monuments, reframe questions of democracy, and encourage a turn to Black, Indigenous, and queer forms of knowledge and ways of being. The awardees represent a turn towards some of the most important questions of our current moment, and their projects will resonate with many publics once realized.”?Jessica Bell Brown, 2024 VIA Curatorial Fellow?writes?in VIA's Spring 2024 Press Release. We are thrilled to announce?our Spring 2024 grant recipients in Artistic Production: 1.?Sonya Clark: "Declaration House"?with Monument Lab (Philadelphia) receiving a production grant of $85,000? 2.?Gerard & Kelly: "Saints at a Disco"?(Various Locations in the US and abroad) receiving an Artist Direct grant of $70,000? 3.?Joiri Minaya: "Fleurs de liberation"?with Prospect New Orleans (New Orleans) receiving a production grant of $75,000? 4.?Harmonia Rosales: "Memorial to the enslaved"?with Society of King’s Chapel (Boston) receiving a grant with acquisition of $85,000? 5.?Saya Woolfalk: "Archive of Earth: Ark"?with Bronx Museum of the Arts (New York City) receiving a production grant of $35,000 https://lnkd.in/eJ8cNGkQ

“Behind every seminal artwork are the partners who take the leap of faith to help the artist materialize it—be it curators, a gallery, an institution, or patrons. VIA Art Fund, a nonprofit co-founded in 2013 by collector and philanthropist Bridgitt Evans, has made it its mission to routinely be the first to take that plunge.” VIA is pleased to share our story in a piece released this week in Cultured Magazine. The article features a candid and inspiring conversation between two of VIA’s Board Members: Arri Burrows and Molly Epstein. Burrows and Epstein talk about what VIA is, what we do and have done, and what drew them to the organization as supporters. https://lnkd.in/emw-cP_5

In 2023 VIA Art Fund awarded a grant in Artistic?Production to contemporary artist Jordan Weber for the production and acquisition?of his public project, "Detroit Remediation Forest"?in East Canfield Pavilion Park, Detroit, MI. The installation?is a square-acre pocket forest that functions as an air detoxification zone and an open-air Environmental Justice classroom. With a crown-shaped Mirrored-aluminum sculptural arch to mark its entrance, the project includes transplants of 200 conifer trees to create a dense canopy that will maximize the absorption of toxic particulate matter (PM) from a nearby automotive factory. The 2019 expansion of the Stellantis auto plant in the majority-Black Detroit neighborhood of East Canfield was the result of a deal for the same manufacturer to reduce emissions in a predominantly white neighborhood. The plant has since had deleterious effects on local public health; the children of East Canfield experience asthma at five times the national rate. An archway that takes its form from West African architecture will mark the entrance into a clearing in the woods. Inside, a forum with stepped seating is encircled by a bridge below the forest canopy, providing a clean-air oasis in a heavily polluted neighborhood. The students from the nearby Barrack Obama Academy will use the space as an Environmental Justice classroom as they explore ways to create greener?futures. The project is now on view and has received great excitement in the community and in the press, including an article in the New York Times titled "A Crowning Achievement in a Neighborhood’s Fight Against Air Pollution." Read the article below. Congratulations to the artist! https://lnkd.in/esPx7GCP