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Today both the National Endowment for the Arts in Washington, D.C. and the Pew Center for Arts and Heritage in Philadelphia announced new rounds of funding,
The NEA has launched ArtsHERE, a funding initiative distributing $12 million nationally to local programs designed to foster community engagement in the arts. Two organizations in the Philadelphia area will receive $117,000 each: the Philadelphia Folklore Project, based in West Philadelphia, and Centro de Cultura Arte Trabajo y Educacion, in Norristown, Pennsylvania.
Pew announced its annual round of funding totaling $10.2 million, some of which will be distributed as unrestricted operating funds to help organizations navigate post-pandemic sustainability. Called “Evolving Futures,” Pew will distribute $3.5 million to nine organizations to help chart their futures.
Much of Pew’s “Evolving Futures” money will go toward forging partnerships between arts organizations. Opera Philadelphia, for example, has started working with the Apollo Theater in New York City to commission new operas centering the African American experience. They previously developed the opera “Charlie Parker’s Yardbird,” about the jazz great. With $4870,000 from Pew, Opera Philadelphia is looking to form similar partnerships elsewhere.
“The partnership with the Apollo, that was forged before I got here, is something that informed how we want to proceed and partner with organizations outside of the operatic firmament,” said Opera Philadelphia executive director Anthony Ross Costanzo. “To create art that’s more multifaceted.”
Philadelphia theater companies learned quickly during the pandemic that partnerships are the key to their survival after shutdown disruptions. Pew is focusing transitional funding onto four companies, including the Wilma Theater ($360,000) for developing replicable models for collaborating, as it has with Woolly Mammoth Theater in Washington, D.C. for the production of “My Mama and the Full-Scale Invasion” earlier this year and “Comeuppance” to hit the stage next month.
Pew funding will help People’s Light and Theater ($480,000) turn its 7-acre campus in Malvern, Pennsylvania into a hub for a range of live arts and support the smaller Inis Nua Theatre Company ($186,000), presenting works from Ireland and United Kingdom, as it forms a partnership with another local company, Tiny Dynamite.
The Barnes Foundation on the Parkway will soon expand to operate the new Calder Gardens across the street, a museum dedicated to the work of Alexander Calder expected to open in 2025. The Pew is giving $480,000 toward that transition.
Another $480,000 is going to the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts to figure out how to optimize its Samuel M.V. Hamilton building on North Broad Street. Earlier this year, PAFA announced it will no longer offer a degree program, which will likely free up about 77,000 square feet of unused space. The organization plans to use its building as an arts hub.
“PAFA is in the process of winding down its degree-granting, academic programs, which will free up classrooms, studios and other maker spaces that can be utilized for collaborations and partnerships with regional arts and cultural organizations,” said Lisa Biagas, PAFA COO, in a statement. “PAFA’s staff and board are in the midst of scoping at how Academy spaces might be best utilized differently.”
The Asian Arts Initiative is receiving $360,000 to help determine how best to utilize its building on Vine Street, and the Historic Germantown coalition will be using its $232,800 grant to streamline and enhance its resource-sharing model among its members.
Pew is also funding several projects geared toward the 2026 semiquincentennial, including First Person Arts’ development of a new piece by documentary theater artist Anna Deavere Smith inspired by the nation’s 250th anniversary, and the development of a new piece of music for orchestra and voice about the promise and troubles of American democracy, to be performed at the Mann Center in Fairmount Park, the site of the original Centennial of 1876.
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