Creative Capital, the national organization that supports individual artists, announces the recipients of its 2008 grants. Fifty-two artists representing forty-one projects in film/video and the visual arts received initial awards of $10,000. As the projects develop, the organization offers additional funds; projects may receive as much as $50,000 each through the tenure of the multi-year grant. Creative Capital artists also participate in the organization’s distinctive Artist Services Program valued at $25,000 per artist. This program offers artists skills-building assistance in areas such as fundraising, networking, marketing, and strategic planning with the goal of advancing both their projects and their careers. So far Creative Capital has devoted more than $6 million to the Artists Services Program and has served 349 artists in its nine-year history.
The panelists who chose the twenty-one film/video projects were Andrea Grover (Aurora Picture Show, Houston), Effie Brown (Duly Noted Films, Los Angeles), Sean Elwood (Creative Capital, New York), Vicki Funari (Creative Capital artist, San Francisco), David Kwok (Tribeca Film Festival, New York), Scott Macauley (independent producer and journalist, New York) and Sheryl Mousley (Walker Art Center, Minneapolis). The seven panelists who selected the twenty visual arts projects were Romi Crawford (Studio Museum in Harlem, New York), Valerie Cassell Oliver (Contemporary Arts Museum Houston), Sean Elwood (Creative Capital, New York), Douglas Fogle (Carnegie Art Museum, Pittsburgh), Maria Elena González (Creative Capital artist, Basel and New York), Rita Gonzalez (Los Angeles County Museum of Art) and Abby Messitte (Clementine Gallery, New York).
Selected from among 2,535 applications, the funded projects come from across the country. Creative Capital artists now represent twenty-eight states in total. About the new class of grantees, Creative Capital President Ruby Lerner said, “I am struck by these artists’ depth of engagement in issues critical to citizens of the world today. They fulfill art’s duty to inspire reflection, understanding and thought beyond the limits of the ordinary.”
With these awards, Creative Capital’s roster of artist projects grows to 283. In 2006 the foundation issued grants in emerging fields, innovative literature and the performing arts. Many of those grantees attended Creative Capital’s Artist Retreat in August 2006, the kickoff event of the Artist Services Program. Through the grant program and its Professional Development Program (a series of public workshops for artists held nationwide), Creative Capital has served more than 1,700 artists.
Nine years ago, Creative Capital embarked on a mission to reinvent the existing model of arts philanthropy, to construct a new paradigm, and to fulfill the specific needs of the country's most innovative artists. Today, it is the premier national artist support organization, committed to the principle that time and advisory services are as crucial to artistic success as funding. Over the lives of its funded projects, Creative Capital provides artists with a flexible program of multi-faceted, sequential support and partners with them to determine how those targeted funds and services can best work in concert to progress towards the grantees’ own goals. Since its founding in 1999, the organization has committed more than $12 million in financial support and services to 283 projects representing 349 artists. A complete list of grantees, profiles of funded projects, and up-to-date grant cycle information can be found online at the foundation’s website at www.creative-capital.org.
Go to http://creative-capital.org/evites/07announce/announce_2.html to see the complete list of winners.
