Four Alaska art groups received over $1 million in grants announced on Tuesday. The four — Sitka Arts Campus, Alaska Native Heritage Center, Anchorage Museum and Out North Contemporary Art House — were among 47 projects selected from nearly 2200 inquiries received from art organizations in the 50 states and several American territories.
A total of $15.4 million in grants were presented by ArtPlace, a collaborative effort by 11 large foundations, including the Rasmuson Foundation, several federal agencies and six banks. The purpose of the awards is support the recipient’s “use of the arts to improve quality of place and transform their communities,” a press release said. Among projects named in the list of awards were a community art initiative in Philadelphia’s Chinatown and the New Orleans Jazz Festival.
The Alaska awards announced in the press release are:
• Alaska Arts Southeast, Inc., Sitka. $350,000 to help transform the former Sheldon Jackson College into the Sitka Arts Campus, “a multidimensional arts campus, bringing new life to rural Southeast Alaska.”
• Alaska Native Heritage Center, Anchorage, $295,000. The Center’s proposed ImagiNative Alaska Experience “will rebrand Anchorage as a center of Native arts by embedding it throughout the city through permanent and temporary interventions, including public art commissions, art markets, small business training, a roving Native Art cart and cultural flash mobs.”
• Out North Contemporary Arts House, Anchorage, $250,000. Out North’s Art House Resident Program will seek to create a “collaborative, dynamic community space where a dozen resident groups can create, present, produce, teach, and reach out through art, music, education and journalism to build community pride, resilience and resolve.”
• Anchorage Museum, $199,960. The Northern Initiative “will use art to spark conversation about how to leverage the distinctiveness of place and position Anchorage as a pivotal city in the Circumpolar North.”
More information about ArtPlace and a complete list of recipients is available at artplaceamerica.org.
Reach Mike Dunham at mdunham@adn.com or 257-4332.
