IAIA’s Museum of Contemporary Native Art awarded $50K grant
Warhol Foundation funding will support residency program
The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts recently granted $50,000 to the Institute of American Indian Art’s Museum of Contemporary Native Art to support continuation of its social engagement residency program.
MoCNA’s Social Engagement Art Residency was created in 2014 to allow four Native American artists each year to stay in Santa Fe for 10 days and pursue projects with community narratives, said Andrea Hanley, IAIA’s membership and program manager.
“What we want to do is create a catalyst to create a community dialogue,” said Hanley. The arts projects are supposed to be “socially engaged.”
One past project was a film called “Knowing You, Santa Fe” that used locals’ responses to a survey and in focus groups to collect community perspectives.
Though the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian committed funding for the program’s first three years, the grant was up this year and now the Washington museum needs to evaluate if it wants to renew it, said MoCNA director Patsy Phillips.
In the meantime, MoCNA applied for funding from the Warhol Foundation so the program could continue this October. The grant, awarded in July, matches what the Washington museum provided and will be used over two years. Hanley said the funding goes toward expenses, including artist travel, supplies, a videographer to document the work and a consultant for the artists.
Representatives from the Warhol Foundation did not respond for comment. Its website says it awards grants to institutions that support artists through exhibitions, research, residencies and other efforts. Other museums that received grants in July included the Chicago and Los Angeles museums of contemporary art, as well as Albuquerque’s 516 Arts.
Phillips mentioned that the museum had received support from the Warhol Foundation before in the form of a 2013 grant for curatorial research for a show titled “Shedding Skin.” With that money, MocNa staged an exhibition and brought in scholars from around the world to discuss such issues as Native American identity.
“It recognizes the work we’re doing and raises attention at a new level,” Hanley said of the Warhol Foundation grants.
Chickasaw composer Jerod Tate and Navajo playwright Rhiana Yazzie will be the first round of artists coming in October.