The Contemporary, Baltimore, MD. Toggle navigation The Contemporary About Programs Projects Speaker Series Scroll Get Your Life! Resources Grit Fund Artist Retreat Support in Baltimore, MD The Contemporary, Baltimore, MD. The Contemporary is temporarily on hiatus as we determine our next steps. Our plan is to continue on as a robust, imaginative and critically important voice in Baltimore and beyond. Our work now is to evolve as a truly sustainable organization. We remain committed to our mission as a nomadic, non collecting art museum, guided by three main principles: artists matter, collaboration is key, and audience is everywhere. We wish to thank everyone for their past support and will look to you again for ideas and resources as we move forward. Perhaps Cara Ober, writing for BMore Art, most cogently articulated the value of Contemporary in her article that is here for your reading pleasure. The Board is taking this time to carefully consider our options in programming, governance and funding. We are considering partnerships and allied opportunities, and we will keep you informed as we progress. We are always interested and open to input as we evolve to our next iteration. We welcome your comments and ideas. Feel free to contact us, [email protected] — Members of the Board of the Contemporary Our plan is to continue on as a robust, imaginative and critically important voice in Baltimore and beyond. Our work now is to evolve as a truly sustainable organization. We remain committed to our mission as a nomadic, non collecting art museum, guided by three main principles: artists matter, collaboration is key, and audience is everywhere. We wish to thank everyone for their past support and will look to you again for ideas and resources as we move forward. Perhaps Cara Ober, writing for BMore Art, most cogently articulated the value of Contemporary in her article that is here for your reading pleasure. The Board is taking this time to carefully consider our options in programming, governance and funding. We are considering partnerships and allied opportunities, and we will keep you informed as we progress. We are always interested and open to input as we evolve to our next iteration. We welcome your comments and ideas. Feel free to contact us, [email protected] — Members of the Board of the Contemporary Recent Projects. The Ground Site: The Hutzler Brothers Palace Building Michael Jones McKean Only When It’s Dark Enough Can You See The Stars Site: The Former Peale Museum Abigail DeVille GhostFood Sites: Various Miriam Simun Bubble Over Green Site: 101 W. North Ave Victoria Fu 
About Toggle navigation The Contemporary About Programs Projects Speaker Series Scroll Get Your Life! Resources Grit Fund Artist Retreat Support Shop in Baltimore, MD The Contemporary, Baltimore, MD. Mission. The Contemporary is a nomadic, non-collecting art museum in Baltimore, Maryland. Our mission expands the idea of a museum as an incubator that commissions site-specific and subject-oriented projects. We engage diverse audiences and advance contemporary art through projects and educational programming. Our work is inspired by three guiding principles: artists matter, collaboration is key, and audience is everywhere. History. In 1989, Baltimore curator George Ciscle founded The Contemporary in order to foster meaningful exchanges between artists, institutions, and diverse audiences. This nomadic institution quickly developed a reputation for delivering unexpected, challenging, and inspiring encounters with contemporary art by notable artists such as Willie Cole, Alison Saar, and Fred Wilson. During its first decade, The Contemporary was “dedicated to redefining the concept of the museum.” It moved around the city of Baltimore, sponsoring exhibitions and projects in a variety of borrowed venues such as warehouses, car dealerships, and bus stations, as well as collaborating with partnering institutions such as the Baltimore Museum of Industry, Maryland Historical Society, Peabody Conservatory, and Walters Art Museum. Because of the variety and ambition of its projects, programs, and operations, The Contemporary’s mission was continuously reviewed, adapted, and reinvented under various directors: Gary Sangster, Thom Collins, Irene Hofmann, and Sue Spaid. Thus the organization’s profile has continuously evolved in its 24-year history. In 1999, The Contemporary rebranded as The Contemporary Museum and moved to 100 W. Centre Street, one block from the Walters Art Museum in the Mount Vernon neighborhood of downtown Baltimore. It organized exhibitions and related programming in that location for nearly ten years and worked with artists such as Dawoud Bey, Chris Burden, Dara Birnbaum, Louise Bourgeois, Futurefarmers, Ellen Gallagher, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Isaac Julien, Christian Marclay, and Soledad Salamé. In 2011, the museum moved out of the W. Centre Street space and returned to the process of facilitating projects in neighboring institutions and buildings. At a critical juncture, and consistent with the belief that the mission should be subject to review, the Board of Trustees suspended operations in May of 2012. An intensive reassessment process followed, ultimately leading to the reinstatement of the institution’s original vision of redefining the museum and the creation of a bold new organizational model. Today, The Contemporary expand's the idea of a museum into an incubator of inclusive spaces and operates as a generative resource for our city. The Contemporary brings museum caliber artists to Baltimore to develop responsive and risk taking site-specific projects. We offer resources, grant opportunities, and an artist retreat for local artists to develop their practice, and we produce educational programs for a broad public,ranging from middle schoolers to adults. Board. Jessica Lanzillotti President [email protected] Jessica Lanzillotti, a South Dakota native, holds the position of Treasurer of Single Carrot Theatre’s Board of Directors and works as the General Manager at Everyman Theatre. Jessica graduated valedictorian of the Towson University Business School in 2002, has interned at Arthur Andersen, LLP, and worked up to a senior accountant at Chernoff & Richards, P.A. She left to form her own accounting company in 2005 and immediately took on Baltimore’s Everyman Theatre as one of her clients. After working contractually for a few years, Jessica joined the Everyman team full time, first as Business Manager and then as General Manager beginning in July of 2012. Jessica does not have any artistic experience, generally preferring to work "behind the scenes," but she attends shows regularly and loves the creative environment. Debra Rubino Vice President Since July 2015, Debra Rubino has served as the vice president of strategic communications at the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA). From 2006–2015, she served as the director of strategic communications at the Open Society Institute-Baltimore, a field office of the international network of the Open Society Foundations. Prior to that position, she was vice president for communications at Goucher College from 1998 to January 2006. When she first arrived in Baltimore in 1988 and through1996, she first served as director of institutional communications at MICA, and then from 1996 to 1998, as associate vice president. At MICA, she was one of six individuals to launch the Baltimore Collegetown Network, a consortium of 15 institutions from the region, and later served as its governing board’s president for five years. She is a member of the board of the Santa Fe University of Art and Design and on The Contemporary Museum in Baltimore. She was one of the founding members of the Greater Baltimore Cultural Alliance, where she served on the Board for eight years. She served as the board president for Art on Purpose until it shut its doors in 2012. She is also an active professional artist—a photographer and printmaker. She holds a BA degree from Franklin and Marshall College and an MFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art. Doug Bothner Doug Bothner is a Senior Associate at Ziger/Snead Architects in Baltimore, Maryland. His work has won numerous design awards from the Baltimore and Maryland chapters of the American Institute of Architects, and has been published in Dwell, Wallpaper* Online, IDFX, Baltimore Style, Home & Design, and VIEW Magazines. Doug is active in the Baltimore community. He has been adjunct faculty at the Maryland Institute of College of Art and a visiting critic at the University of Maryland School of Architecture, the School of Architecture and Planning at The Catholic University, and Morgan State University School of Architecture. As an avid cyclist, he served as a Juror for the Station North Arts & Entertainment Bike Rack Competition. He holds a Master of Architecture from the Yale University School of Architecture where he was awarded The Drawing Prize in 1996, and he graduated with Honors in Painting from Wesleyan University. Sarva Girdhar Sarva Girdhar, M.D. is a board certified surgeon, in practice since 1977, specializing in general surgery, wound care, and veins. His office and practice are located in Westminster, MD. Born and raised in India, Sarva completed his medical studies at the University of Gauhati and the Postgraduate Institute of Medical Education and Research before immigrating to the United States in 1971. From 1971-1977, Sarva completed medical residences and fellowships in Baltimore, Dallas, St. Louis as well as Altoona, PA. Sarva is very interested in contemporary art, specifically installation and site-specific works. He is an avid contemporary art collector focusing predominately on Indian and South Asian artists. He lives in Pikesville with his wife Veena. Joanne Gold Joanna Golden Joanna Golden is the Creative Director of Pie in the Sky, a pie baking company located in Aspen, CO. She splits her time between Aspen and Baltimore, where she was born and raised. She attended the Park School of Baltimore and then went on to receive her BFA in Costume Design from the Rhode Island School of Design. Joanna worked in the costume design industry for many years before starting her family of two children. She has been an active member of the The Walters Art Museum Women's Committee since 2000 and is also a member of the Board of Trustees for The Maryland Zoo. Benjamin Guthorn Joyce Yu-Jean Lee Joyce Yu-Jean Lee is an artist who works primarily in video installation, drawing, and photography. She hails from Dallas, TX and has a M.F.A. from the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) and B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania. Joyce has participated in various supported artist residencies, and has exhibited on the east coast and various international locations including Italy, Germany, and Taiwan. She is the recipient of a 2013 Franklin Furnace Fund Grant; a 2013 Maryland State Arts Council Individual Artist Award; and a 2010 So Hamiltonian Fellowship. The Washington Post included her Passages exhibition in their “Top 10 Best Art Gallery Shows” in Washington D.C. in 2012. Joyce currently teaches part-time at MICA and The Corcoran College of Art + Design, and can be found cruising around Charm City on her trusty bicycle. Rita Walters Since February 2015, Rita has served as Vice President for Advancement at MICA. Over her career, Walters has helped to secure millions of dollars for education and nonprofit organizations. Prior to joining MICA, Walters served as chief development officer for Washington National Cathedral, where she has worked to increase the endowment, more consistently and closely engaged donors, and developed new fundraising initiatives. Prior to the Cathedral she was a senior associate director of development for Johns Hopkins University Zanvyl Krieger School of Arts and Sciences, director of development for the Baltimore Presbytery, and annual fund officer for Big Brothers Big Sisters of Central Maryland. She also spent 14 years in finance working both in New York City for AMEX as a senior accountant; and in NJ for Willingboro Board of Education, a $50 million dollar school district where she served as an accountant. Walters has been deeply engaged in the community, and in addition to the Contemporary, also serves on the Leadership Council for Convergence Center for Policy Resolution in Washington, DC. She earned a master’s degree in liberal arts and a graduate certificate in nonprofit studies at the Institute for Policy Studies Center for Civil Society Studies from Johns Hopkins University and a Bachelor of Science degree in accounting from Fairleigh Dickinson University. She resides in Baltimore City with her husband. They have two college-aged sons and one unruly dog-named Barry Allen.
Artist Retreat Toggle navigation The Contemporary About Programs Projects Speaker Series Scroll Get Your Life! Resources Grit Fund Artist Retreat Support in Baltimore, MD The Contemporary, Baltimore, MD. Artist Retreat. Stay tuned for more info on the next Artist Retreat The Contemporary’s Inaugural Artist Retreat took place at the Pearlstone Center from Thursday, August 4th to Sunday, August 7th, 2016. The Contemporary convened 50 Baltimore artists and 25 national arts consultants including critics, curators, gallerists, and collectors, for three days of intensive professional development, community building, and networking. The retreat was free for all selected artists and includes transportation to and from the center, lodging, and all meals. Keynote: by Ruby Lerner, Founder of Creative Capital Lecture: Heather Hart, The Black Lunch Table Lecture: Sean J Patrick Carney, Bruce High Quality Foundation Panel: Project Grants: From the Rubys to Creative Capital Lisa Dent (Creative Capital), Sonja Cendak (Greater Baltimore Cultural Alliance) Moderated by Deana Haggag Panel: Galleries, Collectors, and Sales Heather Bhandari (The Artist Project/LA + ART/WORK + Mixed Greens), Jackie Milad (The Delaware Contemporary), and Suzanne Seesman (Vox Populi + Nicola Midnight St. Claire); moderated by Joyce Yu-Jean Lee (The Contemporary) Panel: Residences George Scheer (Elsewhere), James McAnally (The Luminary + Temporary Art Review), and Shervone Neckles-Ortiz (Joan Mitchell Foundation); moderated by Lu Zhang (The Contemporary) Panel: Financial Literacy: Budgeting and Taxes Cara Ober (BmoreArt) and Jessica Lanzillotti (Everyman Theatre + The Contemporary) Panel: Civics and the City Jess Solomon (Art in Praxis + Bromo Arts District) Workshop: Artists and Parenting facilitated by Elissa Blount Moorhead (TNEG Films + The Contemporary) Workshop: MFA? Lu Zhang (The Contemporary) Workshop: Real Estate: Buying and Renting Priya Bhayana (Independent Cultural Organizer) and Ginevra Shay (The Contemporary) Workshop: Talking About Your Work Leslie Shepard (LS Consulting + Air.C) and Liz Lerman (Arizona State University) Round Table Discussion: National Arts Organizing Network Courtney Find (Common Field) Artist Presentations from 50 Baltimore artists Artist and Consultant One-on-One Conversations Bonfire with S'mores Dance Party Download the Program from 2016 Artist Retreat Attending Artists: Adam Holofcener Alice Valenti Antonio McAfee Audrey Gair Chanet Wallace Christina Haines Christina McCleary Colette Veasey-Cullors Curtis Miller D Watkins Dave Eassa Dirk Joseph Erin Fostel Hasani Claxton Hoesy Corona Jenné Afiya Matthews Jerrell Gibbs Joyce J. Scott Khadija Adell Kimi Hanauer Kyle Tata L. E. Doughtie Liz Donadio Laure Drogoul Lauren Frances Adams Leyla Rzayeva Lisa Dillin Magali Hebert-Huot Malcolm Peacock Margaret Rorison Margo Elsayd Marian April Glebes Markele Cullins Mary Anne Arntzen Megan Lewis Morgan Dowty Nick Peelor Phaan Howng Saida Agostini Sidney Hall Stephen Towns Stewart Watson Sydney Spann Tanya Garcia Theresa Chromati Tiffany Jones Travis Levasseur Ursula W Populoh Victor FM Torres Zoë Charlton Kind Words Attending the inaugural Contemporary Artist Retreat in 2016 was a transformative and invaluable experience for my practice! Thanks to The Contemporary's Artist Retreat I was able to strengthen both my local and national professional creative networks; My organization (Labbodies) joined the national Common Field network; I was featured in Defy/Define at Transformer DC in the Fall of 2016; I was awarded a Robert W Deutsch Foundation's Ruby’s Artist Grant in Visual Arts 2016-2017 to develop wearable sculptures for my project Alie[N]ation; Labbodies was a awarded an Andy Warhol Grit Fund Grant in Visual Arts 2017; In June 2017 I presented “Alien Nation” (my most ambitious performance to date with 24 performers) at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Shadow/Casters curated by Victoria Reis from Transformer DC; And this fall I am happy to report that I have been accepted to the inaugural 9 month Halcyon Arts Lab Fellowship 2017-2018 in Washington, DC. During my fellowship I will develop videos and soundscapes for Alie[N]ation. — Hoesy Corona | www.hoesycorona.com | @hoesycorona The Contemporary's retreat in 2016 was my first point of access into an arts community in Baltimore. It gave me the opportunity to share my work with local and national artists, curators, and gallerists. The retreat created multiple speaking, showing, and curatorial opportunities for me immediately afterwards. Outside of professional development, I met individuals who are some of my closest friends today. Their support assures me that the work I make is needed and valued. — Malcolm Peacock One of the rarest platforms in the art world are those in which artists, institutions and the constellations of supporters around them all work together to take care of one another. One of our foundational directives at The Luminary is that our programs should model a world we want to live in more broadly - an idea we unfortunately don't see enacted enough. Thanks to The Contemporary in Baltimore for inviting me in as a guest consultant to contribute to (but mostly just witness) an authentic intersectional space emerging for their first Artist Retreat. It's the model of an art world more institutions should pursue (though I doubt they could pull it off better than Deana Haggag Lu Zhang Ginevra Shay et al). — James McAnally (The Luminary Foundation, St. Louis, Missouri)
Support Toggle navigation The Contemporary About Programs Projects Speaker Series Scroll Get Your Life! Resources Grit Fund Artist Retreat Support Shop in Baltimore, MD The Contemporary, Baltimore, MD. Support. The Contemporary relies on your donation to keep our operation up and running! The impact of your gift is major. Contributions of any size can make a huge difference in helping us bring our projects and educational outreach to life. Since your donation will support our mission, it is 100% tax-deductible. — If your prefer, checks can be mailed to The Contemporary. Please make checks payable to The Contemporary and send to: The Contemporary PO Box 1572 Baltimore, MD 21203 To Donate please fill out our online donation form. Thank you! Online donations to The Contemporary are processed through Stripe. Supporters. We are immeasurably grateful to those who have made contributions in support of our operations and programming. $100,000+ The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts $50,000–$99,999 Aaron and Lillie Straus Foundation Robert W. Deutsch Foundation $20,000–$49,999 Surdna Foundation William G. Baker, Jr. Memorial Fund $10,000–$19,999 T. Rowe Price Foundation Downtown Partnership of Baltimore Jacob and Hilda Blaustein Foundation $5,000–$9,999 Aaron B. Cohen Charitable Foundation Davison–Golden Family Philanthropic Fund Creative Baltimore Fund $1,000–$4,999 Maryland State Arts Council $0–$1,000 Individuals Miriam Arenberg Pam & Mark Berman Elissa Blount Moorhead Douglas Bothner & Jacky Jennings Constance Caplan George Ciscle Tamar Cloyd Sue Cohen Jeffry Cudlin Lionel Foster Sarva & Veena Girdhar Joanne Gold & Andrew Stern Joanna Golden Deana Haggag Mona & Mokhtar Haggag Rosemary Harder Jennifer & David Heinemann Sandra D. Hess Jessica Lanzillotti Fred & Jonna Lazarus Joyce Yu-Jean Lee Jason Lowy Kathy O’Dell Bodil Ottesen Wendy Rosen & Richard Weisman Debra & Joe Rubino Leslie Shepard Joaneath Spicer Terry Squyres Karen Stults John Waters Stewart Watson & Jim Vose Steve Ziger & Jamie Snead Robin Zimelman
Sign up for Contemporary emails » Email Address: Donate »»» $[___] SUPPORT US! YOUR 100% TAX-DEDUCTIBLE GIFT ENABLES US TO PRODUCE COMPELLING CONTEMPORARY ART IN BALTIMORE AS WELL AS PROVIDE RESOURCES FOR OUR LOCAL ARTS COMMUNITY. Donate »»» $[___] The Contemporary is a nomadic, non-collecting art museum in Baltimore, Maryland, guided by three main principles: artists matter, collaboration is key, and audience is everywhere. The Contemporary (Museum) of Baltimore PO Box 1572 Baltimore MD 21203 — T: 443.388.8980 F: 410.387.7658 info@contemporary.org About Mission & History Staff CAC Board Support Press Opportunities Programming Projects Grit Fund Artist Retreat Speaker Series Get Your Life! Connect Email List Facebook Flickr Instagram Tumblr Twitter Vimeo YouTube — Donate © Copyright 1989–2017, The Contemporary Designed by OOKB, Powered by CAPE
Get Your Life! Toggle navigation The Contemporary About Programs Projects Speaker Series Scroll Get Your Life! Resources Grit Fund Artist Retreat Support Shop in Baltimore, MD The Contemporary, Baltimore, MD. Get Your Life! Get Your Life! (GYL!) is a youth-led production company that creates collaborative video projects between middle school students, practicing artists, and institutions. Using a broad curriculum, the program puts adults to work executing the designs and direction of young people, resulting in a range of video works such as short films, television shows, commercials, and music videos. The program was adopted by The Contemporary in 2016, following the promotion of Lee Heinemann as our Education Director. Lee founded GYL! in 2014 during an extended residency at 901 Arts—a grassroots community center dedicated to providing art and music programs to the children and teens of the Better Waverly neighborhood—which is still an active and ongoing program partner. Archive. 2015–16 Credits: Renee Anderson, Jasmine Cannady, D'Asia, Karisma Daniels, Jaida Douglass, Maggie Fitz, Daja Haleem, Dalin Haleem, Lee Heinemann, Louquiana Mullen, Luz Orozco, Anais Perez, & Xavier Wade, with the BALTI GURLS as the artists-in-residence in 2016. Kala Rado: Commercial Break The REAL Artists of Get Your Life! Episode 3 (Reunion Special) The REAL Artists of Get Your Life! Episode 2 (Christmas Special) The REAL Artists of Get Your Life! Episode 1 (Halloween Special) 2014–15 Credits: Isaiah Benjamin, Karisma Daniels, Jaida Douglass, Maggie Fitz, Daja Haleem, Dalin Haleem, Lee Heinemann, Louquiana Mullen, & Xavier Wade, with artist-in-residence Amanda Horowitz in 2014 and Jared Brown & Adi Shachar in 2015. Get Your Life! Reunion Special 2014-2015 LIFE AS HOLLYWOOD KARISMA: The Karisma Daniels Show ISAIAH: Animal Exploration NIA: Queen Chastity Chrystal Enchantment II JAIDA & LA'DAYA: L & J Jewelry XAVIER: I Have Special Powers Introducing Get Your Life!
Grit Fund 2017 Grantees Toggle navigation The Contemporary About Programs Projects Speaker Series Scroll Get Your Life! Resources Grit Fund Artist Retreat Support Shop in Baltimore, MD The Contemporary, Baltimore, MD. Grit Fund. 2016 / 2015 / FAQs / Budget Form / Information Sessions and Workshops The Contemporary is pleased to announce the third round of grantees of the Grit Fund. In 2017, the Grit Fund received over 70 applications and awarded $55,250 to 11 projects with grants ranging from $3,000 to $6,000. Awards were determined by a five-person jury of local and national arts leaders: Cameron Shaw (New Orleans, LA), Carolyn Lazard (Philadelphia, PA), Khadija Nia Adell (Baltimore, MD), Kris Kuramitsu (Los Angeles, CA), and Melissa Webb (Baltimore, MD). The Contemporary would like to congratulate this year’s grantees: A Revolutionary Summer Publications; Baltimore’s Gifted Shop & Sip Exhibition; Blush + Brews; Close Up Baltimore; Extant Arts; Kidult Presents: Outside the Box with Abu the Flutemaker; LabBodies Performance Art Review III: Freedom; NONUMENT 01: The McKeldin Fountain; Refugee Youth Publishing Workshops; Secret Psychic Cinema’s Season 3 Programming; and WOO Windows. The Grit Fund supports unincorporated and collaborative artist-organized activity that contributes significantly to Baltimore's arts landscape but seldom qualifies for traditional funding. Established with generous support from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, and bolstered in round two with additional support from the Robert W. Deutsch Foundation, the Grit Fund encourages projects that generate opportunities and create platforms for artists to engage with each other and with the public. Funded activities could include but are not limited to: exhibitions, publications, public events, public art, film screenings, the ongoing work of an existing arts venue or collective, and the founding of a new arts venue or collective. About the Grantees A Revolutionary Summer Publications A Revolutionary Summer Publications by Andria N. Cole and Malene Bell; funded $5000. A Revolutionary Summer is an intensive critical reading and writing workshop series dedicated to the dissection and production of womanist literature and art. A Revolutionary Summer exists to keep young Black girls whole, to balance the scales, to offer up a Nobel Laureate, radical painter, love song, and afro picked to perfection for every stupid, shallow representation of her. The Grit Fund supports the production and online publication of seven to nine issues of an interactive vocabulary acquisition magazine and a printed literary journal. Baltimore’s Gifted Shop & Sip Exhibition Baltimore’s Gifted Shop & Sip Exhibition by C. Harvey; funded $4800. Baltimore’s Gifted is an art & e-commerce initiative for black youth artists. Youth artists will learn the basics of merchandising, product presentation, and invoicing. The Grit Fund supports two ‘Shop & Sip’ Pop-Up Exhibitions to showcase and sell original artwork and art-derived products. The events will bring exposure to often overlooked gifted black youth in the city while generating alternative income based on their own creative merit. Blush + Brews Blush + Brews by Jacob Marley, Alejandra Nunez, Ashley Chambers, and Jeffrey Crowell; funded $5000. Blush + Brews is a monthly free dance party inspired by and for women in Baltimore and the surrounding cities. With help from the Grit Fund, Blush + Brews will expand and improve their platform for female identifying artists in Baltimore by hosting additional events outside of the monthly dance parties including an all ages free event in Station North specifically for high school students. The event will showcase the musical and visual talents of the city’s younger artists. Close Up Baltimore Close Up Baltimore by Emma Fesperman, Elsa Haarstad, and Meryam Bouadjemi; funded $3000. Launched after the national media reacted to the events of April 2015 by portraying the city as a troubled, violent, and impoverished place that is best avoided, Close Up Baltimore is a project that aims to put Baltimore in the spotlight on its own terms. The Grit Fund supports the online platform’s general operating and the ongoing work of commissioning local photographers from ten different neighborhoods to gather the stories of their neighbors and showcase these perspectives from across the city. Extant Arts Extant Arts by Hannah Brancato, Alanah Nichole, Kafi D’Ambrosi, Robin Marquis, Sabeau Rea, Saida Agostini, Samantha Black, Serena Anderson, Shanti Flagg, Sophie Hess, and Sreyashi Tinni Bhattacharyya; funded $6000. Extant Arts is a day long survivor-centered and survivor-led arts festival that celebrates the complexity of survivor voices and histories. The Grit Fund supports workshops, a zine, and the realization of the festival including: ritual drummings and parades, musical and poetry performances, and a visual arts exhibition to showcase the creative work of over fifty local artists. Hosted in Rosemont, FORCE’s Gather Together in collaboration with WombWork Productions, Extant Arts aims to energize and activate local communities to affirm survivors. Kidult Presents: Outside the Box with Abu the Flutemaker Kidult Presents: Outside the Box with Abu the Flutemaker by Diedra Dawkins, Abu the Flutemaker, Malaika Clements, Papa Dame, Theresa Columbus, and Tracie Jiggetts; funded $6000. Kidult Presents: Outside The Box with Abu the Flutemaker is a multimedia performance piece that incorporates visual arts, music and performance to bring generations together to co-create and make stories come to life. The Grit Fund supports a free three-week intensive workshop for youths between the ages of 11 and 16 and two public performances. LabBodies Performance Art Review III: Freedom LabBodies Performance Art Review III: Freedom by Ashley DeHoyos, Ada Pinkston, and Hoesy Corona; funded $6000. LabBodies Performance Art Review III: Freedom will be the third iteration of LabBodies annual performance art festival. This program began in 2015 when organizers saw a need to create a space for local artists to examine the socio-political pressure that comes from the boundaries of race, class, gender, and power in the United States of America. The festival provides a platform for artists that exist on the margins to present their work in a supportive environment. The Grit Fund supports general operating and the production and presentation of the third year of the festival. NONUMENT 01: THE MCKELDIN FOUNTAIN NONUMENT 01: The McKeldin Fountain by Lisa Moren, Jaimes Mayhew, Martin Bricelj Baraga, and Neja Tomšič; funded $5950. NONUMENT 01 showcases performance artists who will recreate historical art interventions, protests, and events that have taken place in Baltimore’s only downtown free speech zone. The story of the Fountain is an example of the escalating privatization of public spaces worldwide, a trend that diminishes access to free and full participation for ordinary people in everyday urban life. The Grit Fund will support the production of the event and the development of an augmented reality app for audience members to recreate the demolished McKeldin Fountain on a smartphone or tablet. Refugee Youth Publishing Workshops Refugee Youth Publishing Workshops by Kimi Hanauer, Bokeum Jeon, Bomin Jeon, and Valentina Cabezas; funded $3600. Press Press (PP) is an interdisciplinary publishing initiative that defines publishing as the act of gathering a public. With a focus on immigrant and refugee communities in Baltimore, PP uses publications to deconstruct hierarchical structures and foster collaborative relationships. Through a partnership with Refugee Youth Project since 2014, PP hosts weekly, publishing workshops with teen refugees in an immigrant and refugee only space. The Grit Fund provides funding for facilities and to hire youth leaders to take the role of organizing their community around an artistic project. Secret Psychic Cinema’s Season 3 Programming Secret Psychic Cinema’s Season 3 Programming by Meredith Moore, Herb Shellenberger, Margaret Rorison, and Siobhan Hagan; funded $4800. Secret Psychic Cinema is a film series created in 2015 by Meredith Moore. Originating in the Bromo Arts District at the venue Psychic Readings, the series has brought inspired and provocative programming to a diverse and growing audience and over time has expanded to other venues in the city. With help from Grit Fund, Secret Psychic Cinema will continue to evolve and expand, providing the funds necessary to bring in outside artists and curators. The series will host seven different events for the third season. WOO Windows WOO Windows by Sarah Marriage; funded $5100. A Workshop of Our Own, or WOO, is a 6400 square foot woodshop located in the Woodberry neighborhood of Baltimore city. WOO's mission is to create a professional woodworking environment which cultivates and promotes the careers of women and gender non-conforming craftspeople in the field. In doing so WOO aims to: amplify our voices, be a collaborative space for professionals, train all skill levels in a supportive environment, and provide apprenticeship opportunities. The Grit Funds supports general operating of the space and WOO Windows, an art and architecture design competition and public art project. About the Jury Cameron Shaw Cameron Shaw is a writer, editor, and the Executive Director of Pelican Bomb in New Orleans. Her work at Pelican Bomb centers on developing platforms for diverse voices, particularly through publishing and exhibition making, that expand the ways individuals and communities interact with contemporary art. Her writing on art and visual culture has been widely published including in The New York Times, Art in America, and BOMB Magazine, as well as in books on Chris Ofili, Nick Cave, Tameka Norris, and other artists. Shaw was awarded a Creative Capital/Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant for Short-Form Writing in 2009 and was selected as a Robert Rauschenberg Foundation Writing Fellow in 2015. Recognized for thought leadership in New Orleans, she has lectured and moderated panels on a range of topics including translating theory to practice, rethinking organizational sustainability, creative publishing strategies, and institutional/community relationship building. Carolyn Lazard Carolyn Lazard is a media and performance artist, writer, and film curator. Her work engages collective practice to address the ethics of care, dependency, and wellness. Lazard has presented work in various spaces including Light Industry, Cleopatra’s, Recess, Anthology Film Archives, the Arnolfini, and the New Museum. She’s published writing in the Brooklyn Rail and Mousse Magazine. She is a founding member of the art collective Canaries and is a 2015 recipient of the Wynn Newhouse Award. Lazard holds a B.A. from Bard college and she lives between New York and Philadelphia. Khadija Nia Adell Khadija Nia Adell is a practicing multimedia artist, arts administrator, and independent curator born and raised in Miami, FL, living and working in Baltimore. Adell graduated magna cum laude from Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) with a BFA in Interdisciplinary Sculpture and Art History. As an advocate for the arts and equitable education, Adell is invested in civic engagement and cultural preservation, with a passion for the legacy of the African diaspora. Recent projects include a year-long fellowship with the Greater Baltimore Cultural Alliance in the Urban Arts Leadership Program. Her work as a visual artist has been featured in solo and group exhibitions in Miami, New Orleans, Baltimore, New York, London, Florence; and in publications in Baltimore and New York. As a independent artists and founding member of the arts collective Balti Gurls, Adell has programmed and collaborated on events focused on providing a social platform for female identifying and queer artists of color in Baltimore. She currently works as a gallery assistant at Galerie Myrtis and is the program coordinator for the North Avenue Knowledge Exchange. Kris Kuramitsu Kris Kuramitsu is a curator who has focused on supporting the work of contemporary artists for over 20 years. She is currently Deputy Director | Senior Curator for The Mistake Room, where she has organized Histories of a Vanishing Present: A Prologue (2016) (co-curator); Cao Fei: Shadow Plays (2015); Carlos Amorales: A Film Trilogy (2015); and Matsumi Kanemitsu: Metamorphic Effects (2014). In her years as an independent curator and consultant, she organized an exhibition of the work of John Outterbridge (LA><ART, 2011); and several group exhibitions, including Home Away (Armory Center for the Arts, 2013); Drawing the Line: Japanese American Art, Design & Activism in Post-War Los Angeles (Japanese American National Museum, 2011); and Invisible City (Instituto Cervantes, Madrid, 2010), among others. Herposts include Associate Director for Artis; Programs Director at Creative Link for the Arts, New York; curator for the collections of Eileen and Peter Norton, and the Collection of Eileen Harris Norton; and the Arts Programs Director for the Peter Norton Family Foundation. She holds a MA in Art History from UCLA and a BA from Pomona College. Melissa Webb Melissa Webb is a fiber artist working in the areas of site-specific installation, large-scale participatory environments, and performance. She has worked as a solo artist, as well as collaboratively with local artists and performers, creating many live performances, interventions, grand public spectacles, and two independent films. Melissa currently serves as Exhibitions Manager for School 33 Art Center and the Baltimore Office of Promotion & the Arts as part of Baltimore's Cultural Council. She has been an adjunct professor within the Fiber department at her alma matter, The Maryland Institute, College of Art since 2009, building and teaching garment and performance-based courses. She is a three-time Janet and Walter Sondheim Prize semi-finalist and the recipient of a Robert Rauschenberg Artistic Innovation and Collaboration Grant. Her work has been featured at venues such as Vis-Arts Rockville, School 33 Art Center, The Maryland Institute, College of Art, The Creative Alliance, The Baltimore Museum of Art, The Baltimore Theatre Project, and at art festivals such as Transmodern, The Philadelphia Fringe, and Baltimore's Artscape. About the Grit Fund The Grit Fund, administered by The Contemporary, provides 8-12 grants in amounts between $1,000–$6,000, totaling $55,000 annually. The Grit Fund will accept proposals from non-incorporated, artist-organized initiatives that work collaboratively and reside in Baltimore City or Baltimore County. Projects must take place in either Baltimore City or Baltimore County and be accessible to the general public. The Contemporary’s mission is inspired by three guiding principles: artists matter, collaboration is key, and audience is everywhere. In keeping with this mission, the Grit Fund values risk-taking, encourages collaboration, and seeks to expand points of access to contemporary art. About the Regional Regranting Program The Regional Regranting Program aims to support vibrant, under-the-radar artistic activity by partnering with leading cultural institutions in communities across the country. The program allows The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts to reach the sizeable population of informal, non-incorporated artist collectives and to support their alternative gathering spaces, publications, websites, events and other projects. The Foundation plans to expand this program with partner organizations in areas where the level of on-the-ground, self-organized artistic activity is highest. The Foundation’s longest running regional regranting program, administered by San Francisco’s Southern Exposure, has been in operation since 2007. With the formation of the Grit Fund, The Contemporary joins eight regranting programs in San Francisco, CA (Southern Exposure’s Alternative Exposure); Kansas City, MO (Charlotte Street Foundation and Spencer Museum of Art’s Rocket Grants); Chicago, IL (Threewalls and Gallery 400’s Propeller Fund); Houston, TX (Diverse Works, Aurora Picture Show, and Project Row Houses’ The Idea Fund); Portland, OR (Portland Institute for Contemporary Art’s The Precipice Fund); Miami, FL (Cannonball’s Wavemaker Grants); Portland, ME (SPACE Gallery’s The Kindling Fund); and New Orleans, LA (Press Street, Ashé Cultural Arts Center, and Pelican Bomb’s Platforms Fund) and Albuquerque, NM (516 Arts’ Fulcrum Fund). About The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts was established in 1987 for the advancement of the visual arts. The Foundation’s objective is to foster innovative artistic expression and the creative process by encouraging and supporting cultural organizations that in turn, directly or indirectly, support artists and their work. The Foundation values the contribution these organizations make to artists and audiences and to society as a whole by supporting, exhibiting, and interpreting a broad spectrum of contemporary artistic practice. About The Contemporary The Contemporary is a nomadic, non-collecting art museum in Baltimore, Maryland. Our mission expands the idea of a museum as an incubator that commissions site-specific and subject-oriented projects. We engage diverse audiences and advance contemporary art through projects and educational programming. Our work is inspired by three guiding principles: artists matter, collaboration is key, and audience is everywhere.
Grit Fund 2015 Grantees Toggle navigation The Contemporary About Programs Projects Speaker Series Scroll Resources Grit Fund Support Shop in Baltimore, MD The Contemporary, Baltimore, MD. Grit Fund. The Contemporary is pleased to announce the inaugural grantees of the Grit Fund. In its first round, the Grit Fund received over 80 applications and awarded $50,000 to 10 projects with grants ranging from $3,200 to $6,000. Awards were determined by a five-person jury of national arts leaders: Roya Amirsoleymani (Portland, OR), Gary Kachadourian (Baltimore, MD), Sharon Louden (Minneapolis, MN), David Mitchell (Baltimore, MD), and José Ruiz (Washington D.C.). The Contemporary would like to congratulate this year’s grantees: Art Royalty Music Video Production & Listening Party; bb: Interdisciplinary Arts Space & Lecture Series; Conversations: A BmoreArt Podcast Series; Exhibitions; Exittheapple Artspace, Capacity Expansion; Hyrsteria; Open Space; Sight Unseen presents New Experimental Works; Skatenight Showcase and Exhibit; and Throwing a Stone. The Grit Fund supports unincorporated and collaborative artist-organized activity that contributes significantly to Baltimore's arts landscape but seldom qualifies for traditional funding. Established with generous support from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, the Grit Fund expands Warhol’s Regional Regranting Program to the Mid-Atlantic, encouraging projects that generate opportunities and create platforms for artists to engage with each other and with the public. Funded activities could include but are not limited to: exhibitions, publications, public events, public art, film screenings, the ongoing work of an existing arts venue or collective, and the founding of a new arts venue or collective. The next Grit Fund round will open on December 8th, 2015. About the Grantees Art Royalty Music Video Production & Listening Party Art Royalty Music Video Production & Listening Party by Tedra Wilson, Marquis Gasque, Felipe Goncalves, Jose Rosero, Donald Ely, Marquis Revlon, and Histo; funded $5200; Art Royalty aims to create a truly interdisciplinary space that exists between visual arts, music, and performance by infusing animation and dance into the Baltimore Club, EDM, and Hip Hop scenes. Grit Fund supports the production and presentation of a 3D music video artist expo event that will join many different artists in creating a dynamic collaborative project and help to sustain artistic business relationships. The event will act as the music video premiere for “Pum Pum,” an electro dance inspired record that is all about women expressing their sexual freedom through costume, song, and dance. “Pum Pum” will be an animated video collaboration that incorporates the art of vogue dance with animation. The event will cross several different audiences including a visual arts audience, dance audience, and Baltimore Club audience. bb: Interdisciplinary Arts Space & Lecture/Talk Show Series bb: Interdisciplinary Arts Space & Lecture/Talk Show Series by Alexandra Linn, Colin Alexander, Lucas Haroldsen, Evan Roche, and Harrison Tyler; funded $4400; bb is an artist-run interdisciplinary project space focused on providing free lectures, workshops, and events to the public. The storefront cycles between functioning as a gallery, lecture hall, and social space for ongoing drawing nights, communal meals, and film screenings. Grit Fund supports the completion of bb’s building renovation, archival documentation of events, and a series of lectures and a talk show aimed at highlighting local residents in both arts and non-arts vocations to expand Baltimore’s art community and audience. By providing a platform for local business owners, realtors, and other self-described non-artists to share their stories in an arts context, the lecture series and Talk Show seek to provide a new perspective on topics generally dominated by the same groups of local artists and audiences. Bb’s first lecture of this series featured a demonstration on pasta-making by chef Sandy Smith of nearby restaurant Bottega. Future lectures and talk shows will further the dialogue beyond food and into more geographically specific topics, potentially covering hair-braiding, boxing, running a carryout food business, and owning property in Baltimore. Conversations: A BmoreArt Podcast Series Conversations: A BmoreArt Podcast Series by Cara Ober, Jack Livingston, Benjamin Levy, Lauren Van Slyke, Dwayne Butcher, Rebecca Juliette, and Jermaine Bell; funded $5700; BmoreArt is a vital online source for arts coverage and conversation in the Mid-Atlantic region. Founded as an artist project in 2007 by Cara Ober, BmoreArt has grown to a daily producer of professional, original content with a staff of three and dozens of regularly contributing writers, editors, photographers, artists, and designers. Grit Fund allows BmoreArt to enhance coverage through a new bi-weekly series of podcast interviews titled “Conversations”. This new series will feature 26 episodes coordinated by Managing Editor Jack Livingston with a diverse group of artists, curators, collectors, and administrators who have made significant contributions to the arts and culture of Baltimore. By chronicling the lives of these individuals, the podcast will examine their goals, strategies, and struggles in shaping the culture of the region from the past to present. BmoreArt has established a proven record for high quality journalism and is dedicated to creating opportunities for professional growth and exposure for area artists, as well as cultivating relationships between the art community and a larger general audience. Exhibitions Exhibitions by Nicholas Wisniewski, Dane Nester, and Matt Papich; funded $5000; “Exhibitions” is the first collaborative work of Nicholas Wisniewski, Dane Nester, and Matt Papich. Grit Fund supports the production of four artist-designed events that subvert the structure of familiar sites of cultural engagement—party, restaurant, concert—and reimagine sterile modes of interaction to produce new, unexpected, and consequential relationships in Baltimore. Investigating familiar sites of cultural engagement often governed by prescribed behaviors and expectations, the project aims to create an alternative, subversive space for social interaction to produce varied relationships with new and different Baltimoreans. “Exhibitions”, which will be hosted at 2239 Kirk Avenue and held at intervals during the course of one year, will deconstruct these familiar social and cultural spaces and the behaviors and expectations that go with them. These multi-sensory gatherings will take new forms—museum-concerts, sound-meals, tactile-observations—that disorient and reorient attendees. Each event will be free and open to the public and collaboratively produced by 4-6 local artists. Exittheapple Artspace Exittheapple Artspace, Capacity Expansion by Pierre Bennu, Jamyla Bennu, and Marc Elzey; funded $4500; Exittheapple Artspace is a grassroots workspace and artspace in Charles Village located at 2334 Guilford Ave. Its mission is to connect art with wide audiences, to create bridges between artists and between genres, and to provide accessible space where underserved segments of the creative community can have access to space and tools to polish and present their craft. Under the creative direction of its founder Pierre Bennu, Exittheapple’s visual art, public art events, and short/feature films specialize in nontraditional and off the beaten track representations of people of color. Founded in September 2014, Exittheapple Artspace hosts a variety of public events including #TheExchange, a monthly community commerce marketplace. The space also functions as an inexpensive rentable studio for film, photography, theater support, and art/literary events. Grit Fund supports capacity expansion of the space by adding a lighting grid and moveable seating which will allow for live performances and workshops. Their programming will grow and include a free seasonal performance with youth workshops. Additionally, rental rates will be discounted for educational and nonprofit projects. Hyrsteria Hyrsteria by Tanya Garcia and Valeria Molinari; funded $5000; Hyrsteria is a collaboration of Tanya Garcia and Valeria Molinari. As Latina feminists, artists, and organizers, they are particularly interested combining their skills in illustration, animation, and storytelling to highlight the stories of the community and generate conversation. Grit Fund supports the launch of a free zine and interactive online website. Hyrsteria is a platform to express a diversity of perspectives through art and language using various methods of storytelling from various local writers, illustrators, poets, and artists to produce material that is socially and politically important, locally and globally. Open Space Open Space by Pete Razon, Colin Alexander, Chris Day, Margo Benson Malter, Nick Peelor, Jasmine Sarp, Conor Stechschulte, and Brendan Sullivan; funded $6000; Founded in 2009, Open Space is a collectively-run arts space. In addition to producing exhibitions and programming in their arts space, members organize two large fairs annually – the Prints and Multiples Fair (PMF) and the Alternative Art Fair. Grit Fund supports the maintenance of Open Space’s exhibition space and the expansion of both fairs. PMF, which occurs every March, is a celebration and survey of artist publications, prints, and objects produced in multiple, with related lectures and programming. The fair is free and open to the public. In the five years since its founding, PMF has grown from presenting 15 vendors to showcasing over 80 vendors from Baltimore and beyond. In the fair’s 6th and most recent year, Open Space established a partnership with the Baltimore Museum of Art’s Contemporary Print Fair to create Baltimore Print City, a city-wide celebration of print with events, exhibitions, lectures, and more. Founded in 2014 in partnership with the Baltimore Office of Promotion and the Arts, Alternative Art Fair features both local and national artist-run spaces and included auxiliary programming such as screenings and performances. Held during Artscape, America’s largest free arts festival, an estimated 50,000 patrons attended Alternative Art Fair in 2014. Open Space built out 16 gallery booths in a parking garage for gallerists to exhibit and sell work to a broad audience. Sight Unseen presents New Experimental Works Sight Unseen presents New Experimental Works by Margaret Rorison, Chris Chen, Samirah Alkassim, and Nadia Hironaka; funded $3200; Sight Unseen is a nomadic moving image series showcasing avant-garde film, video, and expanded cinema whose mission is to support artists and their work. Since 2012, Sight Unseen has invited artists to Baltimore to screen and perform their innovative works, providing support by hosting them in a professional and dedicated atmosphere and paying them for their work. Since its founding, Sight Unseen has presented work from emerging and established avant-garde filmmakers, media artists and live performers to the Baltimore community. Grit Fund supports “New Experimental Works,” a project composed of three distinct film programs that will be free and open to the public and held at select Baltimore venues: a collection of contemporary short experimental films from the Arab world curated by Independent filmmaker and film scholar, Samirah Alkassim; a series of video works by film, video and collage artist, Michael Robinson; and hosting an experimental filmmaker, Su Friedrich. Friedrich’s recent essay film, Gut Renovation is an epic personal essay film charting the destruction of Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Sight Unseen is interested in presenting this specific film, as it brings up similar topics and concerns surrounding the newly established Station North Arts District in Baltimore. Skate Night Showcase Skate Night Showcase and Exhibit by Lawrence Moore, Travis Johnson, and Glenford Nunez; funded $5500; Through Skate Night Showcase, collective members of It’s My Skate Night celebrate a roller skating subculture that travel internationally for skate jams and highlight Baltimore as a home to a large population of these skaters. Grit Fund supports skating-specific performances by local roller skaters, infused with skating inspired photography and video shorts (including a screening of United Skates Documentary), exhibits by the African American Roller Skate Archive, and an Open Skate Night. The event will take place at Shake and Bake Family Fun Center over the summer. Free to the public, the Showcase aims to increase the exposure of the art of roller skating, spark interest from diverse communities in Baltimore, and repopulate the iconic rink. Throwing a Stone Throwing a Stone by Gianna Rodriguez and Dave Eassa; funded $5600; Gianna Rodriguez and Dave Eassa wish to broaden the accessibility of art making to youth and adults, expanding their practice beyond the studio and redefining the definition of ‘artist.’ Their two-person team is driven to create artistic opportunities where they are most rare, focusing on providing access to art within adult and juvenile justice institutions. Both artists are experienced in teaching art-making classes in correctional facilities as well as in community settings. Their project, Throwing a Stone, provides programming in the Baltimore City Juvenile Justice Center (BCJJC), the Maryland Correctional Institution- Jessup (MCIJ), and in the greater Baltimore community. The Grit Fund will support programming such as: a lecture series, a publication of work created by the participants within the BCJJC and the MCIJ, and a final exhibition of the works created. Round 1 submissions closed on 2.20.2015 Round 2 submissions open on 12.8.2015 About the Jury Roya Amirsoleymani Roya Amirsoleymani is the Community Engagement Manager with the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art (PICA) in Portland, Oregon, a multidisciplinary contemporary art center that, since 1995, has supported artists and audiences through exhibitions and performances, residencies and commissions, educational and public programs, and the annual, internationally-renowned Time-Based Art Festival (TBA). In addition to curating public programs and managing community and audience partnerships, outreach, and engagement, she oversees PICA's Precipice Fund, a grants program for Portland artists that is part of the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts’ Regional Regranting Program. Roya has curated and managed community outreach and programming for exhibitions and film festivals in Portland, Phoenix, San Francisco and Southern California. She is an adjunct faculty member with Portland State University's MFA in Art & Social Practice program. Roya holds a Master’s in Arts Management from the University of Oregon with research concentrations in contemporary, feminist, and community art. Gary Kachadourian Gary Kachadourian is an artist based in Baltimore who often makes drawings, posters and printed multiples. Recent exhibitions include the 12th National Drawing Invitational, Arkansas Art Center; Forest/City at FAM/Western Carolina University; Home Maker at Purchase College, SUNY, Floorplan at PLUG Projects, Kansas City, MO; and Baker Artists Awards Exhibition at The Baltimore Museum of Art. His books and posters have been carried by Half Letter Press, Printed Matter, and Quimby's Bookstore.He worked for the Baltimore Office of Promotion & The Arts, formerly the Mayor's Advisory Committee on Art and Culture, from 1987 to 2009 where he coordinated grant programs, exhibitions for Artscape, the city's mural program and numerous temporary public arts projects in the city of Baltimore. Sharon Louden Sharon Louden is an artist based in Minneapolis, whose work is included in the permanent collections of the Neuberger Museum of Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, National Gallery of Art, Arkansas Arts Center, Yale University Art Gallery, Weatherspoon Art Museum, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston as well as many other institutions. She has received a grant from the Elizabeth Foundation and the New York Foundation for the Arts, and has participated in residencies at Tamarind Institute, Urban Glass and Art Omi. Louden is the editor of the book "Living and Sustaining a Creative Life: Essays by 40 Working Artists" published by Intellect Books and distributed by the University of Chicago Press, and teaches at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design as well as the New York Academy of Art. David Mitchell David Mitchell is the Program Manager for the Urban Arts Leadership Program at the Greater Baltimore Cultural Alliance. He has worked closely with the Robert W. Deutsch Foundation for the past 3 years , and recently took on the titles of Community Outreach Coordinator for the Baltimore Arts Realty Corporation and Director of Programming at the Motor House Performance Space, He is an Executive Board Member/ Associate Artistic Director for Arena Players Inc, in addition to serving as a Board Member for both EMP Collective and The Bromo Seltzer Arts District. He graduated from Morgan State University in 1998 with a BA in Theatre, and in 2001 received an MFA from the New School for Social Research. He returned to Baltimore and worked as a full time lecturer at Morgan State University from 2005 to 2008. Since then, he has been a facilitator and major catalyst; in bringing together diverse segments of the performing arts community. José Ruiz José Ruiz is a Peruvian-born artist and curator. He received his MFA in 2004 from the San Francisco Art Institute’s New Genres program and a BA in Studio Art from the University of Maryland. During the past 15 years, he has shown his work in US cities such as New York, Miami, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Philadelphia, and Washington, DC and internationally in countries such as Egypt, Ireland, Mexico, Japan, Slovakia, Germany, Hungary, South Africa, South Korea, and the Netherlands. His projects have been featured in museums such as El Museo del Barrio, Queens Museum of Art, Bronx Museum of the Arts, El Museo de Arte de El Salvador, and the Van Abbe Museum. Ruiz’s practice has been the subject of various publications, including the New York Times, The New Yorker, Wall Street Journal, ARTnews, Arte al Dia, Artnet, and the Washington Post. He currently serves as an adjunct professor at George Washington University and the Maryland Institute College of Art. Additionally, he is the founder of Furthermore— a research, production and development lab in Washington, DC—and a co-founder of Present Company—a Brooklyn-based exhibition, performance and social space. About the Grit Fund The Grit Fund, administered by The Contemporary, provides 8-12 grants in amounts between $1,000–$6,000, totaling $50,000 annually. The Grit Fund will accept proposals from non-incorporated, artist-organized initiatives that work collaboratively and reside in Baltimore City or Baltimore County. Projects must take place in either Baltimore City or Baltimore County and be accessible to the general public. The Contemporary’s mission is inspired by three guiding principles: artists matter, collaboration is key, and audience is everywhere. In keeping with this mission, the Grit Fund values risk-taking, encourages collaboration, and seeks to expand points of access to contemporary art. The next Grit Fund round will open on December 8th, 2015. About the Regional Regranting Program The Regional Regranting Program aims to support vibrant, under-the-radar artistic activity by partnering with leading cultural institutions in communities across the country. The program allows The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts to reach the sizeable population of informal, non-incorporated artist collectives and to support their alternative gathering spaces, publications, websites, events and other projects. The Foundation plans to expand this program with partner organizations in areas where the level of on-the-ground, self-organized artistic activity is highest. The Foundation’s longest running regional regranting program, administered by San Francisco’s Southern Exposure, has been in operation since 2007. With the formation of the Grit Fund, The Contemporary joins eight regranting programs in San Francisco, CA (Southern Exposure’s Alternative Exposure); Kansas City, MO (Charlotte Street Foundation and Spencer Museum of Art’s Rocket Grants); Chicago, IL (Threewalls and Gallery 400’s Propeller Fund); Houston, TX (Diverse Works, Aurora Picture Show, and Project Row Houses’ The Idea Fund); Portland, OR (Portland Institute for Contemporary Art’s The Precipice Fund); Miami, FL (Cannonball’s Wavemaker Grants); Portland, ME (SPACE Gallery’s The Kindling Fund); and New Orleans, LA (Press Street, Ashé Cultural Arts Center, and Pelican Bomb’s Platforms Fund). About The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts was established in 1987 for the advancement of the visual arts. The Foundation’s objective is to foster innovative artistic expression and the creative process by encouraging and supporting cultural organizations that in turn, directly or indirectly, support artists and their work. The Foundation values the contribution these organizations make to artists and audiences and to society as a whole by supporting, exhibiting, and interpreting a broad spectrum of contemporary artistic practice. About The Contemporary The Contemporary is a nomadic, non-collecting art museum in Baltimore, Maryland. Our mission expands the idea of a museum as an incubator that commissions site-specific and subject-oriented projects. We engage diverse audiences and advance contemporary art through projects and educational programming. Our work is inspired by three guiding principles: artists matter, collaboration is key, and audience is everywhere.
Grit Fund 2016 Grantees Toggle navigation The Contemporary About Programs Projects Speaker Series Scroll Get Your Life! Resources Grit Fund Artist Retreat Support Shop in Baltimore, MD The Contemporary, Baltimore, MD. Grit Fund. 2016 / 2015 / FAQs / Budget Form / Information Sessions and Workshops The Contemporary is pleased to announce the second round of grantees of the Grit Fund. In 2016, the Grit Fund received over 70 applications and awarded $67,000 to 13 projects with grants ranging from $2,171 to $6,000. Awards were determined by a five-person jury of national arts leaders: Natalie Campbell (Washington D.C.), Ryan Dennis (Houston, TX), Kimberly Drew (New York, NY), Dave Eassa (Baltimore, MD), and Jackie Milad (Baltimore, MD). The Contemporary would like to congratulate this year’s grantees: 'sindikit; Acres Issue 4: Video Series; BALTI GURLS: "Self Care" "Exposure" and "Practice" Programming Series; Ceramic Workshops at The Rec Room; Current Space; Good News Baltimore Collaborative Arts & Research Environment; Hack the Patriarchy; KAHLON: the Festival; La Bodega Collective; Oak Hill Reconstruction Workbook; Peace Love Camera; True Laurels; and XXChange: A showcase of self-identifying artists, designers, and makers in Baltimore. The Grit Fund supports unincorporated and collaborative artist-organized activity that contributes significantly to Baltimore's arts landscape but seldom qualifies for traditional funding. Established with generous support from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, and bolstered in this round with additional support from the Robert W. Deutsch Foundation, the Grit Fund encourages projects that generate opportunities and create platforms for artists to engage with each other and with the public. Funded activities could include but are not limited to: exhibitions, publications, public events, public art, film screenings, the ongoing work of an existing arts venue or collective, and the founding of a new arts venue or collective. The next Grit Fund round will open on December 6th, 2016. About the Grantees 'sindikit 'sindikit by Zöe Charlton and Tim Doud; funded $6000. ‘sindikit is a project space to support experimental work, practice-based research, and a site for conversations. Housed within Area 405, in the growing Station North Arts District, 'sindikit adds to the already vital and growing creative community in of Baltimore and the greater DC metro area. The Grit Fund supports a year of general operation and programming—including 6 exhibitions and several community driven events with artists and arts supporters. Acres Issue 4: Video series Acres Issue 4: Video series by Danielle Criqui, Jasmine Sarp, and Marian Blair; funded $5000. Acres is a Baltimore based curatorial project that has been self-publishing an annual arts and culture magazine since 2013. The Grit Fund will support Acres expand upon its next issue by producing a video mini-doc series that takes a closer look at the artists, entrepreneurs, and thinkers that make up Baltimore’s current cultural landscape. BALTI GURLS BALTI GURLS: "Self Care" "Exposure" and "Practice" Programming Series by Jenne Afiya, Khadija Nia Adell, Ashley Chambers, Christianna Clark, N'Deye Diakhate, and Alejandra Nune; funded $5000. BALTI GURLS is an art squad of black and brown female-identified artists with a particular focus on new media and cross-disciplinary practice. Their mission is to create a community of like-minded folks, IRL and URL. The Grit Fund allows BALTI GURLS to curate a three part series of community events. Structured around the themes of “Self-Care” “Exposure” and “Practice”, these events will further the collective’s programming goal of providing “creative safe space” for women of color. All events will be professionally documented, archived, and made publicly available online. A limited edition print zine will also be compiled and made available via a public zine release event. An online version will also be available on the collective’s site. Ceramic Workshops at The Rec Room Ceramic Workshops at The Rec Room by Christina Haines and Maggie Fitzpatrick; funded $5480. The Rec Room is an artist-run interdisciplinary arts center located in East Baltimore. With the help of the Grit fund, The Rec Room will offer a series of affordable ceramic workshops, catering to local artists seeking access to shared studio equipment and classroom space. Current Space Current Space by Michael Benevento, Andrew Liang, Monique Crabb; funded $6000. Current Space is an interdisciplinary, experimental, volunteer artist-run gallery, studio, and performance space. For the past 11 years, Current Space has occupied vacant city-owned property, but are presently negotiating for ownership of their building and a neighboring property on Howard Street. The Grit Fund supports a year of general operations and programming–including 18 exhibitions, 5-10+ outdoor performance events, festivals, and affordable studios/facilities–while Current Space puts the bulk of their resources towards securing these buildings permanently. Good News Baltimore Collaborative Arts & Research Environment Good News Baltimore Collaborative Arts & Research Environment by Tobore Sefia, Jamar Jones, Brian Dawkins; funded $5000. Good News Baltimore (GNB) is a magazine-style web series produced by Six Point Pictures that features thought-provoking documentaries, inspiring narratives, informative interviews, and exhilarating musical performances. With the Grit Fund, GNB is planning to convert a portion of its studio space currently used for storage into an operational environment for creativity and community involvement. The Collaborative Arts & Research Environment (CARE) project will be an art, culture, exhibition and research space established with the purpose of sharing knowledge and perspectives in an open environment that promotes creative collaboration, exploration, and ultimately invites people to celebrate the arts in a historically neglected portion of southwest Baltimore. Hack the Patriarchy Hack the Patriarchy by Katie Duffy, Jordan Bradley, Jose Andres Rosero, Amanda Agricola, and Mateo Marquez; funded $4120. Hack the Patriarchy is a week long Baltimore-wide hackathon focusing on creating experimental design apps and interfaces which tackle issues of gender, race and orientation. With help from the Grit Fund, the hackathon will be open to all self described artists and will be supplemented by a series of design and development crash courses. KAHLON: the Festival KAHLON: the Festival by Abdu Eaton, Johnny Rogers, Theresa Chromati, Lawrence Burney, and Ale Nune; funded $6000. KAHLON is a bimonthly music and performance showcase that creates platforms for . It’s also supported by a visual team that includes projection artist Jedicom and digital designer Theresa Chromati. The Grit Fund grant will contribute to furthering Kahlon’s impact and reach by taking the event to the next level and making it an annual festival. La Bodega Collective La Bodega Collective by Vincent Seadler, Margo Elsayd, Camillo Pierera, Delaney Cate, and Erick A. Benitez; funded $2171. La Bodega Collective is a socially conscious collective that operates a multi faceted gallery that aims to blur the line between art and everyday life. The Grit Fund will allow capacity expansion of the space. Oak Hill Reconstruction Workbook Oak Hill Reconstruction Workbook by Sean Keelan, Tanya Garcia, Ashley Hufnagel, and Nick Petr; funded $6000. The Oak Hill Center for Education and Culture is a non-traditional school in Baltimore City. The Reconstruction Workbook Project is a collaboration to produce and distribute a free tool for teaching and learning the complex relationship between race and class in the United States based inspired by an examination of W.E.B. Du Bois’s Black Reconstruction in America 1860-1880. The Grit Fund supports the project’s capacity to span three months of public events and result in an exhibition, catalogue, and freely distributed Reconstruction Workbook. Peace Love Camera Peace Love Camera by Noah Scialom, Devin Allen, and Dominic Nell; awarded $6000. Peace Love Camera provides underserved and underrepresented populations in Baltimore a platform to share their voices, tell their own stories and break down stereotypes through the medium of photography. With support from The Grit Fund, Peace Love Camera will provide over 100 children at the Kids Safe Zone with daily access to photographic equipment, including digital and film cameras, video cameras, dark rooms for film development and direct artistic mentorship. True Laurels True Laurels by Lawrence Burney, Nia Hampton, Antonio Hernandez, Khadija Adel; awarded $5000. True Laurels is a print magazine dedicated to highlighting the most captivating and untapped artists within Baltimore City’s visual and music art scenes. With the Grit Fund, the magazine will be able to produce a greater amount of physical issues, continue to organize events and provide a one-stop destination for Baltimore artists. Previously released on an inconsistent basis due to a lack of funding for production, True Laurels’ aim, going forward, is to be published quarterly with an accompanying free event given for loyal and prospective supporters to get a first look at the magazine before it is made available online and at nationwide stockists. XXChange XXChange: A showcase of self-identifying artists, designers, and makers in Baltimore by Hannah Wides, Breon Gillian, Jorgelina Lopez, and Letta Moore; funded $6000. The Baltimore Women’s Maker Collective is a growing, intersectional feminist group of artists and craftswomen. With support from the Grit Fund, the collective will be organizing an open-source website and XXChange, a month-long art exhibit and series of workshops at Area405. XXChange celebrates self-identified cis and trans* women and genderfluid people who are makers, artists, and designers in Baltimore. About the Jury Natalie Campbell Natalie Campbell is an independent curator, artist and arts worker active in DC and New York whose interests include alternative exhibition formats and artists’ books. Recent projects include a program of artist-led walks for the February 2016 CAA Conference. Since 2007 she and Heidi Neilson have operated SP Weather Station, an artist-run weather station based in Queens, NY that organizes weatherrelated publications, events, and exhibitions. Exhibitions include The Crier, Pleasant Plains Workshop, DC (2013), Heat Island, Smack Mellon, NY (2011), Shape Language, Nicole Klagsbrun Gallery, NYC (2010), Artists’ Books as (Sub)Culture, The Center for Book Arts, New York (2009). She holds an MA in Art History from Hunter College and lectures in Art History at the Corcoran School of Arts + Design at George Washington University. Ryan Dennis Ryan Dennis joined Project Row Houses in Houston as the Public Art Director in October 2012. Her interests include African American and international contemporary art, with a particular focus on socially engaged practices in all media, site-specific projects, and public interventions. Ryan has organized exhibitions and programs including, Round 41: Process and Action: An Exploration of Ideas (2014); Round 40: Monuments: Right Beyond the Site (2014). She has written for the 2014 Prospect 3 catalogue and the Studio Museum in Harlem Magazine. Prior to Project Row Houses she worked in New York City at the Museum for African Art as the traveling exhibition manager. She received her master’s degree in Arts and Cultural Management from Pratt Institute. Prior to moving to New York City, Ryan worked as a community organizer and a curatorial assistant at The Menil Collection in Houston, TX. Kimberly Drew Kimberly Drew (a.k.a. @museummammy) received her B.A. from Smith College in Art History and African-American Studies, with a concentration in Museum Studies. An avid lover of black culture and art, Drew first experienced the art world as an intern in the Director’s Office of The Studio Museum in Harlem. Her time at the Studio Museum inspired her to start the Tumblr blog Black Contemporary Art, sparking her interest in social media. Since starting her blog, Drew has worked for Hyperallergic, The Studio Museum in Harlem, and Lehmann Maupin. She has delivered lectures and participated in panel discussions at the New Museum of Contemporary Art, the Performa Biennial, Art Basel, the Brooklyn Museum, the Bronx Museum of the Arts, Creative Many (Detroit, MI) and elsewhere. Drew is currently the Associate Online Community Producer at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Dave Eassa Dave Eassa is a painter and activist living and working in Baltimore. He received his BFA in Painting from the Maryland Institute College of Art in 2013. He has exhibited his work in solo and two person exhibitions in Brooklyn, NY, Philadelphia, PA, Washington D.C, and Baltimore, MD and internationally in group exhibitions. His work was published in New American Paintings No. 112 and The Pinch Journal. Eassa is the founder and director of Free Space, an artist led organization, which brings arts classes to incarcerated men and women within the Maryland prison system. Free Space brings programming to three different correctional facilities in Jessup, MD. Eassa is a Baltimore Community Fellow with the Open Society Institute through 2017, and has received support from the Maryland State Arts Council, the Baltimore Office of Promotion and the Arts, and The Contemporary. Jackie Milad Jackie Milad is a practicing visual artist and curator based in Baltimore City. She began her curatorial career in 2002 as the Co-Founder of the Transmodern Festival, an artist-run performance art festival based in Baltimore. Besides numerous independent curatorial projects, Jackie has served as Chief Curator for the following institutions: Goucher College, Stamp Gallery at University of Maryland in College Park, and currently, The Delaware Contemporary (formerly Delaware Center for the Contemporary Arts) in Wilmington. She earned her MFA from Towson University and her BFA from the School of Museum of Fine Arts. About the Grit Fund The Grit Fund, administered by The Contemporary, provides 8-12 grants in amounts between $1,000–$6,000, totaling $50,000 annually. The Grit Fund will accept proposals from non-incorporated, artist-organized initiatives that work collaboratively and reside in Baltimore City or Baltimore County. Projects must take place in either Baltimore City or Baltimore County and be accessible to the general public. The Contemporary’s mission is inspired by three guiding principles: artists matter, collaboration is key, and audience is everywhere. In keeping with this mission, the Grit Fund values risk-taking, encourages collaboration, and seeks to expand points of access to contemporary art. The next Grit Fund round will open on December 6th, 2016. About the Regional Regranting Program The Regional Regranting Program aims to support vibrant, under-the-radar artistic activity by partnering with leading cultural institutions in communities across the country. The program allows The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts to reach the sizeable population of informal, non-incorporated artist collectives and to support their alternative gathering spaces, publications, websites, events and other projects. The Foundation plans to expand this program with partner organizations in areas where the level of on-the-ground, self-organized artistic activity is highest. The Foundation’s longest running regional regranting program, administered by San Francisco’s Southern Exposure, has been in operation since 2007. With the formation of the Grit Fund, The Contemporary joins eight regranting programs in San Francisco, CA (Southern Exposure’s Alternative Exposure); Kansas City, MO (Charlotte Street Foundation and Spencer Museum of Art’s Rocket Grants); Chicago, IL (Threewalls and Gallery 400’s Propeller Fund); Houston, TX (Diverse Works, Aurora Picture Show, and Project Row Houses’ The Idea Fund); Portland, OR (Portland Institute for Contemporary Art’s The Precipice Fund); Miami, FL (Cannonball’s Wavemaker Grants); Portland, ME (SPACE Gallery’s The Kindling Fund); and New Orleans, LA (Press Street, Ashé Cultural Arts Center, and Pelican Bomb’s Platforms Fund). About The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts was established in 1987 for the advancement of the visual arts. The Foundation’s objective is to foster innovative artistic expression and the creative process by encouraging and supporting cultural organizations that in turn, directly or indirectly, support artists and their work. The Foundation values the contribution these organizations make to artists and audiences and to society as a whole by supporting, exhibiting, and interpreting a broad spectrum of contemporary artistic practice. About The Contemporary The Contemporary is a nomadic, non-collecting art museum in Baltimore, Maryland. Our mission expands the idea of a museum as an incubator that commissions site-specific and subject-oriented projects. We engage diverse audiences and advance contemporary art through projects and educational programming. Our work is inspired by three guiding principles: artists matter, collaboration is key, and audience is everywhere.
Grit Fund FAQs Toggle navigation The Contemporary About Projects Speaker Series Grit Fund Guidelines Budget Form FAQ Guidelines PDF Support in Baltimore, MD The Contemporary, Baltimore, MD. Grit Fund. 2016 / 2015 / FAQs / Budget Form / Information Sessions and Workshops FAQ’s What do you mean by collaborative? Collaborative projects present the creative contributions of more than one author. Projects can take many forms. Examples include exhibitions presenting the works of multiple artists, web-based projects with multiple contributors, publications with several writers, a series of exhibitions / publications / screenings / lectures / prints each featuring a different artist, etc. What types of projects does Grit Fund support? Grit Fund supports a wide range of artist-initiated collaborative projects that showcase the work of more than one artist, are unlikely to be funded otherwise, and engage the public. Funded activities include exhibitions, publications, public events, public art, film screenings, lecture series, artist residencies, the ongoing work of an existing arts venue or collective, the founding of a new arts venue or collective, and more. Please refer to our eligibility requirements and funding priorities. What types of projects will not be funded? Projects proposed by artists outside of Baltimore City or Baltimore County, projects proposed by an individual artist to present their own work, projects that are a part of a registered 501(c)(3) non profit organization’s programming, projects proposed by students, and projects that do not have a public component will not receive funding. Please refer to our eligibility requirements and funding priorities. I know the fund only supports collaborative projects, but I think my project should be considered because it is highly participatory and involves the audience directly. Can I apply? It is unlikely that your project will be considered. The jury may review a proposal from an individual artist seeking to present their own work if they present a strong argument for active audience participation that verges on the collaborative. Does the Grit Fund support work outside of the visual arts? While the Grit Fund supports interdisciplinary practices, projects should be strongly connected to the visual arts. Performing or media arts are eligible when visual art is a key component of the finished project. While my group is not a 501(c)3, nonprofit organization, I want to present my work in a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization’s space and use their facilities. Is my project still eligible for funding? Only artist initiated projects are eligible for funding. Working with a nonprofit, such as the use of their facilities for a performance or event does not necessarily mean your project is not eligible for funding. However, the Grit Fund is not intended to cover production costs that should be covered by an established organization as a part of their regular program. Can I apply for a grant to acquire equipment? Equipment purchase or rental can be included as an expense as a part of a larger project. You may not apply for a grant with the sole purpose of acquiring equipment. Can I apply to fund general operating for a new or existing art space? Yes. Examples of general operating costs associated with the launch of a new arts space or the support of an existing arts space include: rent, utilities, artist and designer fees, materials and supplies, and promotional materials. Can I include artist fees in my budget? Yes, include artist fees in your budget to compensate participants, collaborators, and/or yourself. Do we need to have a confirmed venue to submit an application? No. However, if a specific venue or site is crucial to the realization of your project, having a confirmed venue speaks to the feasibility of your project. If you do not have a confirmed venue, describe the types of venues suitable for the presentation of your project, and how you plan to research and secure a venue. Be as specific as possible. Who should be listed as the lead organizer? The lead organizer will be the primary contact for the project during the application and granting process. The lead organizer will also be responsible for any taxes on the award. Additionally, the lead organizer must reside in Baltimore City or Baltimore County and cannot be a student at the time of application or during the granting period. Please elaborate on the roles of the lead organizer, collaborators, and participants. The lead organizer is the primary contact for the project. Lead organizers and collaborators envision, organize, and implement the project. Participants do not play an administrative role. An artist who is supported by the project (i.e., their work will be presented) but does not play an organizing role is considered a participant. Can I apply as a lead organizer without listing other collaborators? You can apply as an individual provided your project serves as a platform for other artists to exhibit, publicly present, or publish their work, etc. Do you have to be a U.S. citizen to apply? No. However, the lead organizer must have a social security number in order to receive payment of the award. How much funding can I request for my project? You may request any amount between $1000 and $6000. Will our application be more competitive if we apply for less funding or if we apply for the maximum amount? The amount of funding you request should accurately reflect the goals and logistics of your project. Whether you request the minimum ($1000) or maximum ($6000) level of support is not a factor in the selection process. Supported projects are chosen for their artistic strength, feasibility, and public interface. Do I need to secure matching funds? No. The Grit Fund does not require matching funds. Please note in your budget any in-kind donations and additional funding you have already secured. Any requests to support projects that still require funding from other unconfirmed sources may be seen by the jury as less feasible. It is important to scale your project appropriately to the amount you request from the Grit Fund. How will the award payment be disbursed? A check will be made out to the lead organizer who will be responsible for any taxes on the award. What is the tax obligation if I receive a grant? Grant monies are subject to taxes. We are not able to provide tax advice. If you have questions regarding tax requirements, please seek advice from an accountant. How can I learn about past funded projects? View project descriptions of funded projects from earlier rounds. Overview Grant Amounts Funding Priorities Review/Selection Eligibility Responsibilties Timeline How To Apply Support Materials Information Sessions Inquiries — FAQ Budget Form Information Sessions & Workshops — Download as PDF
Toggle navigation The Contemporary About Programs Projects Speaker Series Scroll Get Your Life! Resources Grit Fund Artist Retreat Support in Baltimore, MD
The Contemporary Toggle navigation The Contemporary About Programs Projects Speaker Series Scroll Get Your Life! Resources Grit Fund Artist Retreat Support Shop in Baltimore, MD The Contemporary, Baltimore, MD. Opportunities. Executive Director The Contemporary, in Baltimore, Maryland, seeks an Executive Director. Interns The Contemporary is seeking 3 paid interns for September 2017-May 2018 
Press Toggle navigation The Contemporary About Programs Projects Speaker Series Scroll Get Your Life! Resources Grit Fund Artist Retreat Support Shop in Baltimore, MD The Contemporary, Baltimore, MD. Press. Press List City Paper: CoHosts wins a “Best of Baltimore” for best synergy Sep 19, 2014 Baltimore Magazine: CoHosts wins a “Best of Baltimore” for best speaker series Jul 25, 2014 Hyperallergic: Being Contemporary in Baltimore by Jillian Steinhauer Dec 12, 2013 City Paper: The Contemporary wins ‘Best Reinvention’ for 2013 Best of Baltimore by City Paper Sep 18, 2013 Baltimore Style: Women in the Arts, featuring Director Deana Haggag by Bret McCabe & Cara Ober Sep 1, 2013 Baltimore Magazine: The Contemporary wins ‘Best Successor’ for 2013 Best of Baltimore by John Lewis Aug 1, 2013 Art in America: Baltimore's Contemporary Museum Reopens with New Director by Kriston Capps Jul 17, 2013 Baltimore Sun: The Contemporary Returns by Editorial Board Jul 8, 2013 Baltimore Sun: Embattled Contemporary Museum to Return This Year by Mary McCauley Jul 2, 2013 City Paper: Contemporary to Reopen with New Director by Baynard Woods Jun 30, 2013 Press Releases The Contemporary announces the Grit Fund, a $50,000 grant initiative that supports collaborative artist-organized activity. Oct 20 2014 The Contemporary announces the hiring of Lu Zhang as Business Manager. Jan 23 2013 The Contemporary kicks off CoHosts, its 2014 Speaker Series, with Coco Fusco and Guest Spot at the Baltimore School for the Arts. Jan 3, 2014 The Contemporary announces the hiring of Ginevra Shay as Program Manager. Dec 19, 2013 The Contemporary relaunches website and announces initial plans & programming. Dec 3, 2013 Press Resources Join our Media List The Contemporary Fact Sheet Frequently Asked Questions
Projects Toggle navigation The Contemporary About Programs Projects Speaker Series Scroll Get Your Life! Resources Grit Fund Artist Retreat Support Shop in Baltimore, MD The Contemporary, Baltimore, MD. Projects. We commission site-specific and subject-oriented projects that exist in public space and are in collaboration with artists and existing arts and non-arts institutions, organizations, sites, and spaces. Recent Project. The Ground by Michael Jones McKean, through May 19, 2017 The Contemporary presents The Ground, a solo commission by New York and Richmond-based artist Michael Jones McKean, at the historic Hutzler Brothers Palace Building, located at 200 North Howard Street. In partnership with AiNET, the project is free and open to the public through May 19, 2017. Join us on Saturday, February 18 from 6-9pm for the opening reception. Hutzler Brothers Palace, erected 1888, and originally advertised as a “museum of merchandise” was the first department store of its kind in Baltimore. In the shell of this former emporium, McKean has fabricated a massive, multi-room, two-story structure, an architectonic labyrinth enfolding diverse aesthetic languages and multiple modes of representation. He merges the museological, the domestic, the store display, the geological, the theatrical, and the digital. In its totality, he has created an extended metaphor on “place”. Not place as a stagnant reality fixed in time, but as an emergent, fecund, and evolving set of conditions metabolizing past histories into the present. With The Ground, McKean proposes longer overlapping and diverging timelines where actants, human and non-human, live in close, nonhierarchical proximity with their time scales flattened and enmeshed. Here, a handmade replica of the human brain co-mingles casually with that of a wolf, whale, cat, and elephant. An out-of-time cave diorama shares a wall with twelve heads, possibly those of costumed members of some undetermined, future leaning, pan-cultural cult. A mise-en-scene built of clay and dirt depicting people participating in a water birth of a new human conflates the contemporary and historical, creation myth and quotidian, abject realism and magic realism. As Hutzler’s slips with each passing year into more hazily remembered regional folklore, it also cements its historical status in a complex and problematic continuum of socio-commercial spaces—the marketplace— where substances and objects from eyeliner to boom boxes, handbags to frying pans, chocolates to wristwatches, were crafted to elicit various degrees of human desire. In this way, McKean conceives of the building as a filter through which materials and objects, each existing within complex global supply chains, have traveled to be displayed, browsed, and purchased before finally dispersing into the community-at-large. Today, nearly thirty years after Hutzler’s has closed, the building houses a vast internet server farm, where information streams into homes, phones, and businesses. Noting that the building sits atop roughly 25% of the earth’s data flow—tweets and texts, selfies, emails, merchandise orders, Skype calls, and search queries—The Ground projects a world slipping into phantom being, matter flattening into proto-screen realities —stoic back-lit voids. The Ground indexes the mysterious and ungraspable space below us— the mantle where all earthbound creation rises from and will return to— carbon to rare earth minerals, platinum to silk, 64GB USB drives to arrowheads. The project also speaks to the complex history of the site stretching from the Holocene, to Anthropocene, to pre-industrial, to 4th wave postindustrial—a testing ground for the successes, challenges, and failures of modernity. McKean offers timelines and sedimented realities, which archive the facades of a crumbling past and future. Expanding a temporal understanding of site, The Ground transmutes artifacts, relics, and talismans, to be discovered again as harbingers of a new time. PROJECT RUN February 18 - May 19 ON VIEW Thursdays-Saturdays, 10am-4pm OPENING RECEPTION Saturday, February 18, 6-9pm ARTIST TALK Monday, February 27, 6-8pm PERFORMANCE (Sonic Meditations) Saturday, March 25, 11am-4pm CURATORIAL TOUR Saturday, April 1, 12-2pm The Hutzler Brothers Palace Building 200 North Howard Street, Baltimore, MD, 21201 Wheelchair accessible entrance at 300 West Lexington Street Archive. 2017 The Ground Site: The Hutzler Brothers Palace Building Michael Jones McKean 2016 Only When It’s Dark Enough Can You See The Stars Site: The Former Peale Museum Abigail DeVille 2015 GhostFood Sites: Various Miriam Simun 2015 Bubble Over Green Site: 101 W. North Ave Victoria Fu 2012 Baltimore Liste 2 Site: The Bank Building Multiple Artists 2012 Uh-Oh: A Whoop Dee Doo Thing Site: Gallery CA Whoop Dee Doo 2011 Moving Right Along Site: Penn Station Multiple Artists 2011 LOL: A Decade of Antic Art Site: Contemporary Museum Multiple Artists 2011 Baltimore Liste 1 Site: Contemporary Museum Multiple Artists 2011 Agitated Histories Site: Contemporary Museum Multiple Artists 2010 Commissure Site: Contemporary Museum Ben Gest 2010 Bearing Witness Site: Contemporary Museum and various locations around Baltimore Bradley McCallum and Jacqueline Tarry 2010 Participation Nation Site: Contemporary Museum Lee Mingwei, Neighborhood Public Radio, Finishing School 2009 FAX Site: Contemporary Museum Multiple Artists 2009 My Food My Poop Site: Contemporary Museum Hugh Pocock 2009 Where Do You Live? Site: Contemporary Museum Soledad Salame 2009 The Reverse Ark: In the Wake Site: Contemporary Museum Futurefarmers 2009 Class Pictures and The Portrait Re/Examined Site: Contemporary Museum and the Walters Art Museum Dawoud Bey 2008 My Life in Fiction Site: Contemporary Museum and various locations around Baltimore Kianga Ford 2008 Cottage Industry Site: Contemporary Museum and various locations around Baltimore Multiple Artists 2007 Double-Take: The Poetics of Illusion and Light Site: Contemporary Museum Alexandra Grant, Bernhard Hildebrant and Mary Temple 2007 Broadcast Site: Contemporary Museum Multiple Artists 2007 St. Cecilia Site: Contemporary Museum Joseph Grigely 2007 Cell Phone: Art and the Mobile Phone Site: Contemporary Museum Multiple Artists 2006 Re:location: A Super Pride Studio Project Site: Contemporary Museum municipalWORKSHOP and Super Pride Studio 2006 Girls Night Out Site: Contemporary Museum Multiple Artists 2006 Headquarters: Investigating the Creation of the Ghetto and the Prison Industrial Complex Site: Contemporary Museum and various locations around Baltimore Multiple Artists 2006 Femme Site: Contemporary Museum and the Walters Art Museum Louise Bourgeois 2005 Crowd of the Person Site: Contemporary Museum Multiple Artists 2005 Beautiful Losers: Contemporary Art and Street Culture Site: Contemporary Museum Multiple Artists 2005 Patriot Site: Contemporary Museum Multiple Artists 2005 Swiss Contemporary Ceramics Site: Contemporary Museum Multiple Artists 2004 both/andnoteither/or Site: Contemporary Museum Sanford Biggers 2004 The New Leipzig School of Painting Site: Contemporary Museum Multiple Artists 2004 Baltimore Site: Contemporary Museum Isaac Julien 2004 Moving Outlines Site: Contemporary Museum Multiple Artists 2003 Hands On Site: Contemporary Museum and MTA buses Multiple Artists 2003 Billboard Project Site: Contemporary Museum and the Walters Art Museum Felix Gonzalez-Torres 2003 Louisa Chase: New Paintings Site: Contemporary Museum Louisa Chase 2003 Imperfect Innocence: The Debra and Dennis Scholl Collection Site: Contemporary Museum Multiple Artists 2002 Hot Summer Site: Contemporary Museum Multiple Artists 2001 Net:Ten Site: Contemporary Museum Multiple Artists 2001 Dennis Adams: Facing Museums Site: Contemporary Museum and the Walters Art Museum Dennis Adams 2001 Moira Dryer: Paintings 1989–1992 Site: Contemporary Museum Moira Dryer 2001 Visibility Site: Contemporary Museum TK 2000 Snapshot: An Exhibition of 1000 Artists Site: Contemporary Museum Multiple Artists 2000 Making Sense Site: Contemporary Museum and Peabody Institute Ellen Gallagher, Christian Marclay and Liliana Porter 1999 Video Art Series Site: Holiday Street Window Galleries Multiple Artists 1999 Impact: Revealing Sources for Contemporary Art Site: Contemporary Museum Multiple Artists 1999 Grandstand Sculpture Site: Maryland State Fairgrounds Multiple Artists 1999 Artsail 99 Site: Rash Field Multiple Artists 1998 Mysterious Voyages: Exploring the Subject of Photography Site: Alex. Brown Building Multiple Artists 1997 X Site 97 Site: Alex. Brown Building Teresita Fernández & Quisqueya Henríquez 1997 Too Jewish? Site: Retail Space at Garrison Forest Plaza Multiple Artists 1996 Aboard the Cyberclipper Site: Multiple Venus & Online Exhibition Lee Boot & Frank Fietzek 1996 Ignisfatuus Site: Howard P. Rawlings Conservatory at Druid Hill Park Paul Etienne Lincoln 1995 Going for Baroque Site: The Walters Art Museum Multiple Artists 1995 Can-ton: The Baltimore Series Site: Canton National Bank Hung Liu 1994 Labor or Love Site: Baltimore Museum of Industry Willie Cole 1994 Home and the World: Architectural Sculpture by Two Contemporary African Artists Site: Morgan State University Aboudramane & Bodys Isek Kingelez 1993 Contemporary East European Ceramics Site: St. Stanislaus Kostka Convent Multiple Artists 1993 Catfish Dreamin’ Site: 1959 Chevy Truck Alison Saar 1993 Mining the Museum Site: Maryland Historical Society Fred Wilson 1992 Soul Shadows: Urban Warrior Myths Site: University of Baltimore Street Garage Multiple Artists 1991 Photo Manifesto: Contemporary Photography in the USSR Site: Greyhound Service Terminal Multiple Artists 1990 Visual Aids Site: Famous Ballroom Multiple Artists 1990 Outcry: Artists Answer Aids Site: Maryland Institute College of Art Multiple Artists
Projects The Contemporary // Project Archives 2017 The Ground 2016 Only When It’s Dark Enough Can You See The Stars 2015 GhostFood 2015 Bubble Over Green Bubble Over Green By Victoria Fu Video Installation view (23-second excerpt of 20-minute variable loop), Velvet Peel 2, 2015, two-channel projection, sound from Victoria Fu on Vimeo. Installation view, VELVET PEEL 1 (5-minute excerpt), 2015 from Victoria Fu on Vimeo. Installation view, VELVET PEEL 1, 2015 from Victoria Fu on Vimeo. Installation walkthrough, Bubble Over Green, The Contemporary, Baltimore, 2015 from Victoria Fu on Vimeo. Title: Bubble Over Green Start Date: February 21, 2015 End Date: April 3, 2015 Artist: Victoria Fu Site: 101 W North Avenue, Baltimore MD 21201 (Former KAGRO Building) Press Release. Bubble Over Green, an exhibition by artist Victoria Fu (b. 1978, Santa Monica, CA; lives in Los Angeles and San Diego, CA), was the museum's first solo commission since its reopening in 2013. Bubble Over Green, was a multilayered audio-visual experience in the former KAGRO building located at 101 W North Avenue in Baltimore's Station North Arts & Entertainment District, on view from February 21-April 3, 2015. Bubble Over Green consisted of moving images projected onto architectural surfaces, aligning the physical site with the space and textures of digital post-production. To produce the commission, The Contemporary activated one of the last remaining Brutalist buildings in the city of Baltimore. There is an important intersection between architecture and art-making, and given the tremendous spur of activity on North Avenue, the project acted as an avenue to give the artist the freedom to create new work in a unique space outside of a traditional museum or gallery setting. The structure of the former KAGRO building functions as a formal layer of the work, allowing Fu to further her interest in the physicality of the moving image. Expanding Fu’swork addressing the virtual space of cinema, Bubble Over Green referenced our habituated haptic engagement with the digital image and touchscreen. The multi-channel video and neon installations depict performing bodies interacting with layers of digital effects. Actions based on touchscreen gestures and dynamics are translated into multiple, mediated, and sculptural contexts. Bubble Over Green featured performers Polina Akhmetzyanova and Matilda Lidberg with sequences filmed in Sweden in May 2014 with funding from Art Matters Foundation. Victoria Fu received her BA from Stanford, MA in Art History/Museum Studies from USC, and MFA from CalArts. Her work has been exhibited most recently at the 2014 Whitney Biennial, New York, NY; Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, La Jolla, CA; New York Film Festival, New York, NY; Simon Preston Gallery, New York, NY; IX Nicaragua Biennial, Managua, Nicaragua; University Art Gallery, UC Irvine, Irvine, CA; among others. She lives and works in Los Angeles and San Diego, CA, where she is Assistant Professor of Visual Arts at the University of San Diego. victoriafu.com OPENING RECEPTION Saturday, February 21, 2015, 7-10pm ARTIST TALK* Monday, February 23, 2015, 6-7:30pm CURATORIAL TOUR Thursday, March 12, 2015, 7-8:30pm CLOSING RECEPTION Friday, March 27, 2015, 7-10pm *: Artist Talk held at the Fred Lazarus IV Center at the Maryland Institute College of Art located at 131 W North Avenue. Bubble Over Green was made possible with lead support from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts with added support from the Maryland Institute College of Art and Station North Arts and Entertainment, Inc. Additional project partnerships and sponsors include Suntravel Service (Ellicott City, MD & Annandale, VA), Sun Insurance (Ellicott City, MD), C&H Restoration and Renovation, Current Space, Chaudron Glass & Mirror Co., Inc., and The Johns Hopkins University Digital Media Center. The Contemporary is funded through the generosity of foundations, government agencies, corporations, and individuals. Major programming support has been provided by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Robert W. Deutsch Foundation, and Aaron & Lillie Straus Foundation. The museum also gratefully acknowledges an ongoing partnership with the Baltimore School for the Arts. The official graphic designer of The Contemporary is The Office of Kristian Bjørnard (OOKB), and the hotel sponsor is Brookshire Suites.
Projects The Contemporary // Project Archives 2017 The Ground 2016 Only When It’s Dark Enough Can You See The Stars 2015 GhostFood 2015 Bubble Over Green Only When It’s Dark Enough Can You See The Stars By Abigail DeVille Video Title: Only When It’s Dark Enough Can You See The Stars Start Date: April 16, 2016 End Date: June 11, 2016 Artist: Abigail DeVille Site: The former Peale Museum, 225 Holliday St, Baltimore, MD 21202 Press Release. Peale Museum Timeline. The Contemporary presents Only When It’s Dark Enough Can You See The Stars, a project with New York-based artist Abigail DeVille at the former Peale Museum located at 225 N. Holiday Street. Opened in 1814, the Peale Museum is the first building in the Western Hemisphere to be built and designed as a museum. Only When It’s Dark Enough Can You See The Stars, a new body of work, including installations and performances, focuses on DeVille’s ongoing research of the Peale Museum’s building and the unruly nature of history. Founded as an arts and natural history museum, the original vision for the Peale Museum, by its founder Rembrandt Peale, was to create an institution that was simultaneously entertaining and scholarly, and to be used as an instrument of democracy. The building operated as such until 1829, going on to become many firsts including Baltimore’s first City Hall and the location of several of Maryland’s first public schools for African-American children. Much of the building’s timeline had to be unearthed for this project, rediscovering facets of its past that had fallen through the cracks of time. In her work, DeVille’s investigations lead to the construction of narratives, environments, and experiences which reference histories that are often overlooked or forgotten. For this project, DeVille postures the Peale Museum’s site as a theoretical passage through spacetime, creating shortcuts for long journeys across history. Only When It’s Dark Enough Can You See The Stars contributes both original research and new perspectives on little-known narratives and lost years of the Peale Museum’s building, opening the door for conversations on education, legislation, cultural preservation, and art’s ability to challenge our notion of time and history. Abigail DeVille (b. 1981, New York, NY) received her MFA from Yale University 2011 and her BFA from the Fashion Institute of Technology in 2007. DeVille has exhibited a growing constellation of site-specific installations in the United States and Europe. Her most recent exhibitions include Revolution in the Making: Abstract Sculpture by Women, 1947-2016 at Hauser Wirth & Schimmel (2016), America, Galerie Michel Rein, Paris (2015); From the Ruins… at 601Artspace (2015), When You Cut Into the Present the Future Leaks Out at the Old Bronx Courthouse (2015), Nobody knows My Name at Monique Meloche Gallery (2015); The Day the Earth Stood Still at Johnson-Kulukundis Family Gallery (2015); Puddle, pothole, portal at Sculpture Center (2014); Playing with Fire: Political Interventions, Dissident Acts, and Mischievous Actions at El Museo del Barrio (2014); Material Histories at the Studio Museum in Harlem (2014); Outside the Lines at the Contemporary Art Museum Houston (2014); Invisible Men: Beyond the Veil, Galerie Michel Rein, Paris (2013); Gastown Follies, Artspeak, Vancouver, BC, (2013); Bronx Calling, The Bronx Museum of the Arts (2013); Future Generation Art Prize at Venice, The 55th Venice Biennale (2013); They might as well have been remnants of the boat, Calder Foundation, New York (2013); XXXXXXX, at Iceberg Projects, Chicago (2013); Fore, The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York (2012); Future Generation Art Prize Exhibition at the Pinchuk Art Centre, Kiev, Ukraine (2012); If I don't think I'm sinking, look what a hole I'm in, Night Gallery, Los Angeles, CA (2012); First Among Equals, ICA, Philadelphia, PA (2012); The Ungovernables, New Museum, NY (2012); Bosch Young Talent Show, Stedelijk Museum, s-Hertogenbosch, Netherlands (2011). She has designed sets for theatrical productions—directed by Peter Sellers and Charlotte Brathwaite—at venues such as La Mama (2015), the Stratford Festival (2014), JACK (2014), and Joe’s Pub (2014). DeVille is a 2012 Joan Mitchell Foundation grant recipient and is a 2014-15 fellow at The Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard and a 2015 Creative Capital grantee. PRESS PREVIEW Monday, April 11th, 9-11am OPENING RECEPTION Saturday, April 16th, 7-10pm ARTIST TALK* Monday, April 28th, 6-7:30pm CURATORIAL TOUR Wednesday, May 18th, 7-8:30pm CLOSING RECEPTION Saturday, June 11th, 7-10pm — Additional programs to be announced throughout the run of the project. Only When It’s Dark Enough Can You See The Stars was made possible with lead support from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts with added support from the The City of Baltimore’s Department of General Services Administration, The Peale Center Board of Trustees, The Loading Dock, the Downtown Partnership, and Bromo Arts and Entertainment District, Inc. Additional project partnerships and sponsors include the Maryland Historical Society and Bile Street Inn. The Contemporary is funded through the generosity of its Board of Trustees, foundations, government agencies, corporations, and individuals. Major institutional support has been provided by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Robert W. Deutsch Foundation, Aaron & Lillie Straus Foundation, William G. Baker, Jr. Memorial Fund, creator of the Baker Artist Awards, Downtown Partnership of Baltimore, and Jacob and Hilda Blaustein Foundation. The museum also gratefully acknowledges an ongoing partnership with the Baltimore School for the Arts. The official graphic designer of The Contemporary is The Office of Kristian Bjørnard (OOKB), and the hotel sponsor is Hotel Indigo.
Projects The Contemporary // Project Archives 2017 The Ground 2016 Only When It’s Dark Enough Can You See The Stars 2015 GhostFood 2015 Bubble Over Green GhostFood By Miriam Simun Skip To Images Title: GhostFood Start Date: October, 2015 End Date: December, 2015 Artist: Miriam Simun Sites: Baltimore Penn Station, Johns Hopkins University Homewood Campus, Lexington Market + more The Contemporary hosted GhostFood a roving Baltimore-wide project, in collaboration with the Program in Museums and Society at Johns Hopkins University. GhostFood, developed by New York-based artist Miriam Simun, is a performance served out of a mobile food cart that examines biodiversity loss brought on by climate change. GhostFood servers guide the public through a pre-nostalgic experience that engages dialogue, considers environmental change and human innovation, and enhances food science understanding. Using technology, memory, and olfactory stimulation, GhostFood serves flavor illusions of foods that are threatened with extinction due to climate change. This iteration of GhostFood was organized by The Contemporary in collaboration with eighteen students in the Program in Museums and Society at Johns Hopkins University enrolled in ‘GhostFood: Curatorial Practicum with The Contemporary,’ which ran Fall 2015. The cart traveled Baltimore throughout October-November 2015. Some of the official events: GHOSTFOOD | FALL 2015 will travel in Baltimore City throughout October-November 2015, with select site engagements highlighted below. All activities are free and open to the public. PENN STATION | 10/15 | 6pm-9pm in conjunction with ongoing activity at Penn Station Plaza, hosted by Station North Arts & Entertainment, Inc. JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY HOMEWOOD | 11/2 | 6pm-9pm with panel discussion: 7pm-8:30pm in conjunction with a panel discussion featuring artist Miriam Simun, anthropologist and educator Anand Pandian, moderated by Adam Sheingate who is the Chair of the Department of Political Science at JHU. The event is free and will be held at JHU's Homewood Campus in Mergenthaler, Room 111, from 7pm-8:30pm. LEXINGTON MARKET | 11/4 | 5pm-9pm in conjunction with Light Up Lexington, a series of quarterly events hosted by Bromo Tower Arts & Entertainment, Inc. MIRIAM SIMUN makes creative disruptions: objects, images and experiences that that poke, provoke, and re-imagine existing systems. Based in scientific, historical and ethnographic research, much of her work interrogates the implications of socio-technical and ecological change. Simun’s work has been presented internationally, including the Museum of Arts and Design, Rauschenberg Project Space, Ronald Feldman Gallery, Postmasters Gallery, Kappatos Gallery, and the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. Her work has been supported by Creative Capital, Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, Joan Mitchell Foundation, and the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, and recognized internationally in publications including the BBC, New York Times, CBC, MTV, The New Yorker, Forbes, Art21, and ARTNews. PROJECT RUN October and November 2015 LOCATIONS All over Baltimore This rendition of GhostFood is made possible with lead support from a grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to Johns Hopkins University in support of the Program in Museums and Society, with additional help from The Verandah, Life After Boring Studios, Whole Foods Market of Mt. Washington, City Seeds, Gallery Four, Station North Arts & Entertainment, Inc., and Bromo Tower Arts & Entertainment, Inc.. The project was originally commissioned by the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation for the multi-site exhibition Marfa Dialogues/NY and developed in collaboration with Miriam Songster with additional support provided by NextFab Studios and Whole Foods. Marfa Dialogues/NY is a collaboration between the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, Ballroom Marfa and the Public Concern Foundation. GhostFood has also been presented by Gallery Aferro in Newark and by SteamWorkPhilly in Philadelphia. Additional thanks are owed to Holly Gressley, Corrie Van Sice, Monell Chemical Senses Center and Olivia Bransbourg. The Contemporary is funded through the generosity of its Board of Trustees, foundations, government agencies, corporations, and individuals. Major institutional support has been provided by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Robert W. Deutsch Foundation, Aaron & Lillie Straus Foundation, William G. Baker, Jr. Memorial Fund, creator of the Baker Artist Awards, Downtown Partnership of Baltimore, and Jacob and Hilda Blaustein Foundation. The museum also gratefully acknowledges an ongoing partnership with the Baltimore School for the Arts. The official graphic designer of The Contemporary is The Office of Kristian Bjørnard (OOKB), and the hotel sponsor is Hotel Indigo.
Projects The Contemporary // Project Archives 2017 The Ground 2016 Only When It’s Dark Enough Can You See The Stars 2015 GhostFood 2015 Bubble Over Green The Ground By Michael Jones McKean Skip To Images Title: The Ground Start Date: February 18, 2017 End Date: May 19, 2017 Artist: Michael Jones McKean The Contemporary presents The Ground, a solo commission by New York and Richmond-based artist Michael Jones McKean, at the historic Hutzler Brothers Palace Building, located at 200 North Howard Street. In partnership with AiNET, the project is free and open to the public through May 19, 2017. Join us on Saturday, February 18 from 6-9pm for the opening reception. Hutzler Brothers Palace, erected 1888, and originally advertised as a “museum of merchandise” was the first department store of its kind in Baltimore. In the shell of this former emporium, McKean has fabricated a massive, multi-room, two-story structure, an architectonic labyrinth enfolding diverse aesthetic languages and multiple modes of representation. He merges the museological, the domestic, the store display, the geological, the theatrical, and the digital. In its totality, he has created an extended metaphor on “place”. Not place as a stagnant reality fixed in time, but as an emergent, fecund, and evolving set of conditions metabolizing past histories into the present. With The Ground, McKean proposes longer overlapping and diverging timelines where actants, human and non-human, live in close, nonhierarchical proximity with their time scales flattened and enmeshed. Here, a handmade replica of the human brain co-mingles casually with that of a wolf, whale, cat, and elephant. An out-of-time cave diorama shares a wall with twelve heads, possibly those of costumed members of some undetermined, future leaning, pan-cultural cult. A mise-en-scene built of clay and dirt depicting people participating in a water birth of a new human conflates the contemporary and historical, creation myth and quotidian, abject realism and magic realism. As Hutzler’s slips with each passing year into more hazily remembered regional folklore, it also cements its historical status in a complex and problematic continuum of socio-commercial spaces—the marketplace— where substances and objects from eyeliner to boom boxes, handbags to frying pans, chocolates to wristwatches, were crafted to elicit various degrees of human desire. In this way, McKean conceives of the building as a filter through which materials and objects, each existing within complex global supply chains, have traveled to be displayed, browsed, and purchased before finally dispersing into the community-at-large. Today, nearly thirty years after Hutzler’s has closed, the building houses a vast internet server farm, where information streams into homes, phones, and businesses. Noting that the building sits atop roughly 25% of the earth’s data flow—tweets and texts, selfies, emails, merchandise orders, Skype calls, and search queries—The Ground projects a world slipping into phantom being, matter flattening into proto-screen realities —stoic back-lit voids. The Ground indexes the mysterious and ungraspable space below us— the mantle where all earthbound creation rises from and will return to— carbon to rare earth minerals, platinum to silk, 64GB USB drives to arrowheads. The project also speaks to the complex history of the site stretching from the Holocene, to Anthropocene, to pre-industrial, to 4th wave postindustrial—a testing ground for the successes, challenges, and failures of modernity. McKean offers timelines and sedimented realities, which archive the facades of a crumbling past and future. Expanding a temporal understanding of site, The Ground transmutes artifacts, relics, and talismans, to be discovered again as harbingers of a new time. PROJECT RUN February 18 - May 19, 2017 OPENING RECEPTION Saturday, February 18, 2017, 6-9pm ARTIST TALK Monday, February 27, 2017, 6-8pm PERFORMANCE (Sonic Meditations) Saturday, March 25, 2017, 11am-4pm CURATORIAL TOUR Saturday, April 1, 2017. 12-2pm LOCATION The Hutzler Brothers Palace Building 200 North Howard Street, Baltimore, MD, 21201 Wheelchair accessible entrance at 300 West Lexington Street The Ground was produced through the gracious efforts of Daniel Kass Beckwith, Byron A Banghart, Melvin Thomas, Marco Duenas, Magali Hebert-Huot, Liam Elliot Doughtie, Whitney Young, Elana Webb, Vin Sandler, Chris Zickefoose, Ryan Syrell, Robert Benjamin Dewey Dowler, Anaís Perez, Luz Orozco, Fanni Somogyi, Erin Stellmon, Grace Whiteside, Miranda Wagner, John Orth, and Amanda Schmidt. The Ground is made possible with lead support from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and in partnership with AiNET, a Maryland-based leader in data center and network solutions that is conscientiously working to improve communities in Baltimore through technology infrastructure and civic engagement. This project is the result of many sponsorships, including the Baltimore Museum of Art, Downtown Partnership of Baltimore, The Foundry, James E. Lewis Museum of Art, Jewish Museum of Maryland, Maryland Archaeological Conservation Lab, McCormick Paint, Open Works Baltimore, Smithsonian 3D, University of Maryland Baltimore, Station North Tool Library, and Walters Art Museum. The Contemporary is funded through the generosity of its Board of Trustees, foundations, government agencies, corporations, and individuals. Major institutional support has been provided by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Robert W. Deutsch Foundation, Aaron & Lillie Straus Foundation, William G. Baker, Jr. Memorial Fund, creator of the Baker Artist Awards, and Jacob and Hilda Blaustein Foundation. The museum also gratefully acknowledges an ongoing partnership with the Baltimore School for the Arts. The official graphic designer of The Contemporary is The Office of Kristian Bjørnard (OOKB), and the hotel sponsor is Hotel Indigo.
The Contemporary: Scroll Toggle navigation The Contemporary About Programs Projects Speaker Series Scroll Get Your Life! Resources Grit Fund Artist Retreat Support in Baltimore, MD The Contemporary, Baltimore, MD. Scroll. Scroll is an annual publication, published by The Contemporary, and produced entirely by our intern staff. Each issue of Scroll will explore a different cultural topic related to the mission and efforts of the museum and will be available, for free, in print and online. Edition #4: 2017 A Tender Thing Produced by Iris Lee, Jenna Porter, and Shan Wallace, Scroll 4: A Tender Thing explores what drives artists to create work and community—sometimes against all odds. A Tender Thing examines the necessity of tenderness towards the self and others to survival and resistance through images, essays, conversations, and quotes; featuring the words of: The Very Black Project (André D Singleton, Justin Fulton, and Trae Harris), Robyn Lynne Marquis, Najee Haynes-Follins, evictees of The Bell Foundry (Elon, Person Abide, and Qué Pequeño), Elissa Blount-Moorhead, Joyce J. Scott, Morgan Monceaux, and Rebecca Nagle. An online version can be found on Issuu. Edition #3: 2016 On Site Space and vacancy and ownership are complicated. Who has access to certain spaces? Who decides which projects warrant having it? And, maybe most importantly, how can spaces be responsibly cultivated for arts endeavors? On Site, produced by Brandon Buckson, May Kim, and Allie Linn, explores Baltimore's past and present cultural landscapes using buildings to tell its history. The case studies investigated in this edition highlight a diverse array of arts projects including ones that were newly inaugurated, long active, and defunct. Download a PDF version. Edition #2: 2015 Bound2 Writing is not on the periphery of the art world but rather complementary; its contributions to the arts should not be understated. Bound 2, produced by Jazmin Smith, Joseph Shaikewitz, and Lily Clark, explores various facets of art writing through nuanced examination. This investigation takes the form of interviews, group discussions, free advertisements, compiled resources, as well as their own essays regarding art criticism. Scroll: Bound 2 doesn’t provide any tangible solutions, but rather explores art writing, criticism, and publishing at the present moment. An online version can be found here. Edition #1: 2014 I Don't Care I Love It Who decides what is ‘contemporary’? The inaugural issue of Scroll, titled I Don’t Care I Love It, produced by Max Anderson, Kimi Hanauer, and Lee Heinemann, investigates tastemaking and highlights significant local cultures that exist independent of socially-constructed hierarchies. The Contemporary’s departure from a permanent, physical space theoretically expands the museum’s presence to the entirety of Baltimore. Scroll: I Don’t Care I Love It responds to this potential by creating a space which is inclusive of people, places, and things that are seldom represented in traditional institutions and histories. An online version can be found here. 
Scroll: Bound 2 Scroll : Bound 2 A publication by The Contemporary Baltimore, MD (2015) Foreword Crisis Mode Roundtable The Boom-and-Bust Era Publication Collectors Sine qua non Glossary Foreword Initially Scroll: Bound 2 set out to satirize a list of grievances we had with a number of big name art publications. We were cynical about how these major periodicals repeatedly serve as echo chambers for ideas, saturate their pages with ads, solicit contributors with a homogenous set of qualifications, and target niche audiences. However, further research ultimately made us realize that these “big name art publications” were far from representative of the current state of art writing. Bound 2 explores various facets of art writing through nuanced examination. This investigation takes the form of interviews, group discussions, free advertisements, compiled resources, as well as our own essays regarding art criticism. We started with an online roundtable between founders and editors of platforms from across the country who we believe take progressive approaches to art writing. From there, we decided to explore printed publications and met with May Kim and Ben Levy, local collectors and supporters of printed matter, as well as Jerry Litofsky, member of the Baltimore-based Society for History and Graphics. Their contributions to Bound 2 reinforce the ongoing significance of printed formats. We opted to end with a compiled glossary that pays homage to a handful of the platforms that have continually inspired us throughout this process. Writing is not on the periphery of the art world but rather complementary; its contributions to the arts should not be understated. It is a practice with boundless potential and a momentum that will continue to expand. With that said, existing art writing is still not without its share of barriers, such as the inaccessibility of language, economic feasibility, a scarcity of paid writing positions, and a lack of diversity. Bound 2 does not provide any tangible solutions, but rather explores art writing, criticism, and publishing at the present moment. While we assert that these endeavors are necessary to contemporary art, there is always room for growth, changing ideas, and new voices. We seek to gauge, challenge, celebrate, and make a case for writing about art. We may have started off with a lengthy list of qualms (a few of which remain) but as we look back, it seems inevitable that we were bound to fall in love. Scroll is an annual publication, published by The Contemporary, and produced entirely by its intern staff. Each issue of Scroll will explore a different cultural topic related to the mission and efforts of The Contemporary and will be available, for free, in print and online. Jazmin Smith is a recent graduate of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. She was born on the twelfth anniversary of Star Wars: A New Hope. Joseph Shaikewitz is an independent curator from St. Louis, MO. He currently studies art history at Johns Hopkins University. Lily Clark studied graphic design at the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA). She loves disco and eating papayas with a spoon. Joseph Shaikewitz Crisis Mode: Art writing and the future of criticality i. In a 2002 round table organized for October's centennial issue, art historian-cum-moderator George Baker concluded that “Never has it been more difficult to practice art criticism.” 1 “Round Table: The Present Conditions of Art Criticism,” October 100(Spring 2002): 201-2. Baker addressed an esteemed panel of fellow art historians, critics, artists, and a museum curator who together explored the changing conditions of art writing. Here in his introduction, Baker wastes little time in summarizing his perception of the state of art criticism, essentially positing it as a practice that has been forced into the periphery. While other participants in the conversation envisioned various fates for this discipline, ranging from the increasing marginalization of the critical voice (Benjamin Buchloh) to the inseparability of artistic practice and discursive writing (Helen Molesworth), an overarching sense of malaise pervaded the tone used to discuss the tradition of art writing. What does it mean to declare a practice “in crisis,” as it appears across literature on the subject? Is it the precursor to the sensationalist eulogies that have accompanied the 'death' of painting, cinema, et al? Or is it an accurate prescription, one that gathers practitioners in a unified search for change and a viable solution? In my own understanding of the phrase, “criticism in crisis” reflects a perceived lack of vision within a communal pursuit. However, when we consider who imposes these assertions of unease, a hierarchical disconnect comes to the surface. The discussion of crisis appears within a notably academic milieu, ranging from books including James Elkins' What Happened to Art Criticism? to museum panels with titles like “The Trouble With Art Criticism.” The problem arises when the scholarly elite takes it upon themselves to place a tombstone over an entire discipline, consequently providing a limited picture of what is taking place more broadly. By potentially ignoring the stakes of their claim, certain members of academia have been able to justify traditional criticism's decline while relegating its place in the art world. In reality, art criticism is an increasingly expanding and experimental field. If there is any crisis in criticism to begin with, it stems from an initial unwillingness to recognize new modes of thinking and writing about art. ii. While criticism, like any practice, has its own set of shortcomings, 2 See Hal Foster, “Post-Critical,” October 139 (Winter 2012) and Orit Gat, “ 'Thanks': On Negative Criticism,” Review 31, January 31, 2015 for accounts on criticality's historical decline and the ramifications of negativity, respectively. the declaration of a crisis both exaggerates its actual state and creates a reluctance around novel ideas. While such a hesitance may manifest itself in certain circles of art writing, art criticism at large is not only promising but prolific. Ultimately, the notion of a crisis is a restricting and hollow label. It clouds the true impact of publications and platforms that are actively hosting new modes of writing and analysis. One example of positive change is the online art journal MOMUS. While it describes itself as “a return to art criticism” in its slogan, it skillfully eschews a recycling of literary tropes and familiar methods of evaluation. Instead, this emergent platform assembles a new wave of art critics from across North America who underscore the importance of changing approaches to criticism. In some of the journal's most compelling articles, its writers highlight the subjective nature of the critical voice by incorporating highly narrative and anecdotal accounts. 3 See in particular Andrew Berardini, “How to Write about Contemporary Art,”MOMUS, October 15, 2014; Aaron Bogart, “Identity After the Internet: Three Berlin Exhibitions in Search of Commonality,”MOMUS, December 22, 2014; and even Clint Burnham, “The Many Violences of Adel Abdessemed,” MOMUS, January 30, 2015. Even in instances of judgment in the traditional sense, progress is still discernible through original stances that are supported through careful investigations of the individual parts of an exhibition. According to founding editor Sky Goodden, MOMUS addresses “both the flaws and strengths of a generation of practitioners in need of renewed reflection,” and does so with “both vulnerability and integrity, depth and accessibility.” 4 Sky Goodden, e-mail message to author, February 4, 2015. In addition to thoughtful and extensive interviews with artists and art professionals, MOMUS emulates but ultimately extends the practice and relevance of art writing through a necessary reconsideration of how it can function at its best. Alongside improvements in the written evaluation of art, an important genre of artist-produced, regionally-focused journals has expanded the dissemination of art and culture. Baltimore-based ACRES, for instance, features bold cultural writing alongside unmediated work from artists across the city. The journal diversifies the content that can live within an arts journal and, in the process, has been positively received throughout the artistic community. Danielle Criqui and Jasmine Sarp, ACRES' founders, see undeniable value in the creation of “a space for sharing works that contribute to a greater dialogue surrounding contemporary art within and beyond Baltimore.” 5 Danielle Criqui and Jasmine Sarp, e-mail message to the author, February 5, 2015. This growing trend of an updated and expanded scope exists not only in localized instances, but on more national levels as well. For example, DIS Magazine, a product of the New York-based collective DIS, has established its own strategies for diversifying the creative role of a critical platform. The magazine embraces experimental endeavors that range from artist-produced stock images to individual issues devoted to such topics as tweenage and artists who are #YoungerThanRihanna. Lauren Boyle, one of the website's founders in a conversation regarding DIS's perspective on fashion, explained that they're “more interested in Burlington Coat Factory than Prada;” 6 Alex Hawgood, “Seriously Unserious About Fashion,” The New York Times, November 16, 2012. this same disavowal of the culturally luxe can be seen in their invigorating approach to topics in contemporary art. As these experimental platforms continue to grow in both their readership and critical range, they epitomize a welcome means of exploring and presenting the multifaceted artistic ventures of today. iii. The defeatist prognosis of a crisis underlying the fate of art criticism may encroach upon ongoing discussions of the subject, but this notion is loaded with inaccuracies. The climate within which contemporary art exists and operates is changing with an unparalleled vigor; this demands an openness toward new forms of art writing, which have been accepted by many but overlooked by a select, albeit distinguished few. In the meantime, the self-inflicted crisis will only discourage access to art criticism by current and prospective readers and writers alike. In fact, this label must be jettisoned altogether, not only to encourage the production and reception of art criticism, but for the sake of reflecting its actual condition. And while there will nevertheless be quandaries that arise within the field of art writing, there is an abundance of visionary thinkers who are carving new paths for the future of this critical exploit. Art criticism is alive and well, and it will take more than a feigned crisis to inhibit its indeterminable growth. Roundtable An online chatroom discussion with national editors of various art writing platforms that took place on 2/6/15 on chatzy.com. Cara Ober Bmore Art Baltimore, MD Colin Alexander Post-Office Arts Journal Baltimore, MD Elizabeth Pulsinelli X-TRA Los Angeles, CA Jonathan Thomas The Third Rail Minneapolis, MN Roberta Fallon The Artblog Philadelphia, PA Tod Lippy ESOPUS New York, NY Does your project aim to fill a void that you see in art criticism or publishing? Jonathan ThomasAre there voids remaining? Elizabeth PulsinelliX-TRA is committed to representing the artist's voice. Tod LippyESOPUS's mission is to create an ad-free space for the presentation of art and other creative disciplines, and to do so with minimal critical commentary: i.e. to let readers access art on its—and their—own terms. Colin AlexanderPost-Office is an effort that's only a month or two old, so our mission is pretty fresh in our mind right now, but the interest is to add voices to Baltimore's arts scene. The number of unincorporated, artist-run spaces is pretty overwhelming for Baltimore's size, so a lot of great shows go unmentioned just because you can only talk about so much at once. I'm also interested in attracting younger artists/writers to arts criticism that might've been intimidated to enter otherwise. Sort of a spectacle of amateurism is my interest here. Roberta FallonWe started The Artblog to combat dwindling arts coverage—and coverage of mostly museum shows and little contemporary art—as well as to put Philadelphia art in a global context. Cara OberThe majority of arts writing focuses on New York and a few other art epicenters of the world. RFBeing so close to New York is a problem for Philadelphia artists. We are always in the shadow. COIt just leaves a majority of art and artists outside of the majority of press options. RFThere is still a void in Philadelphia. Compared to the number of venues, artists, and exhibits, very little gets covered. COLike The Artblog, BmoreArt exists to stimulate an intimate conversation around what area artists are doing and to share that with a national and international audience. RFWe didn't start with the aim of an international audience, but thanks to the Internet, we got one! TLRoberta and Cara, do you find that even arts coverage on the web skews toward New York and LA? COI think most art coverage in general is about New York and a few other main art epicenters. It makes sense, but gives readers and artists the sense that art is not being successfully made in other places. RFI think arts criticism on the Internet, when it's from regional centers, has a regional focus. Our focus is pretty much regional, although we are ambitious to cover the world! COIt is important to recognize regional art communities and to generate a discussion and awareness, as well as a value, based on local and regional disciplines. EPEven within one of those “epicenters”—Los Angeles—there is still room for a lot more deep and adventurous criticism. COHow many full time arts critics still exist in this country? Ten? I think there may be a void. There is definitely room for “deep and adventurous” criticism! Does this connect back to Jonathan's initial question? Do voids still exist? EPX-TRA was founded in the 1990s in response to that void, and our mission is to provoke critical dialogue about contemporary art. The void certainly still exists! RFI think there's a void in funding. That is a whole other topic. COI thought he was joking! JTSorry for the ambiguity. I only mean that there must be 100 art publications and periodicals that begin with the letter 'A.' RFJonathan, they're all mining the same 10 artists and art venues... JTIt may be true that there is an imperial logic at play in the art world, where global cities tend, or have tended in the past, to dominate the discursive field. But I think we're also in the midst of a moment where interesting publishing projects are emerging all over the place. COIn terms of old-school, rigorous criticism, this seems to be waning...even in the big national publications. Readers often tell me they want more critical criticism—do you think this is a void? Anyone? RFWe just did a reader survey and people varied in their responses. Some wanted long form writing, others said “I have one minute, give it to me quick.” CAWell, there's also the difference between deep criticism/analysis and art news here. How many of those publications are the equivalent to the grocery checkout tabloids now? Who was where, who saw what, etc. EPCourtesy of the Internet, we have a lot more art writing available to us, which can be good. But much of it is reportage, rather than criticism. TLCan someone define “rigorous criticism”? COBy rigorous criticism, I mean writing that is not afraid to offend or upset, but from an honest and constructive place. When I read most big art publications, the large advertisements are the same as the feature stories and that seems to temper the writing. I think, for most readers, writing to inform can be dull to read. Sometimes the drama of a negative review can really stimulate a discussion. This is difficult to pull off in a small town when you're trying to woo advertisers as well. RFWhen working with young writers, mostly they are afraid to be critical, either in a rigorous or not way. It's hard to find writers who can express a critical point. COAgreed. I think this role walks a fine line and requires experience and finesse; you have to be extremely well informed when being negative, much more so than writing something agreeable. TLSpeaking of wooing advertisers, can Artforum, as beholden as it is to advertisers/galleries/collectors/etc., ever produce truly rigorous criticism? RFArtblog has had advertisers since 2005. We write about or don't write about their shows depending on what's competing and what we want to cover. It's possible to write a negative review about a sponsor's show. They see us as a community network and not as a mouthpiece. COI think once you have earned a community's trust, it can work. How would you describe your different approaches when writing for your publications? EPIn terms of our approach to art writing, we are collectively edited by a board of independent artists and writers. We see ourselves as a platform for many different styles of art writing and multiple perspectives. JTThe Third Rail aims to be a site for historical and theoretical inquiry and critique. But turn the page and you'll find a poem, an artist project, an interview with a musician. We try to mix things up in this way. Because each issue is organized as a sequence of projects, we keep the advertisements in the back as to not interfere with the sequence. When you pick up Artforum, for example, it's not clear what's an advertisement and what isn't, which basically renders everything an advertisement. COI think a lot of 'readers' just look at the pictures in Artforum... JTWe need to sell ads to survive. There are some galleries who have said: “We only advertise with Artforum.” COExactly! It's a tough road to navigate. All types of newspapers and periodicals are in the same boat. EPI'm curious how other publications choose whom to write and what to write about. I don't know if this is typical or not, but the majority of what we publish is pitched to us by writers. For some reason, this works better for us than assigning topics to a stable of writers. I think it's because the writers' knowledge and passion are better aligned with their subjects. CAElizabeth, that makes sense. I think many writers might not have anything more than a fluff piece to write about a show if they aren't personally invested in some way. RFMostly I assign stories based on what I want covered and what I think the writer will be excited about or provoked by. COI write about the projects I love or hate. Usually if I attempt to write about something I feel lukewarm about, the writing is the same. RFSometimes I ask writers to go outside their comfort zone and write about something they may not know about or be excited about. I have gotten mixed results. What feedback have you received from the writers or artists who have contributed to your project? TL Contributor feedback has been very positive for us, but I think it helps that we deal directly with the artists we feature, rather than reaching them through galleries, etc. There are very few chances of miscommunication that way. JTThe feedback has been generally positive. We're currently printing Issue 4, so we've only been around for that long, but the publication is free, and it's distributed internationally, so people, contributors, and readers like that—as do we! But it's hard. COIf contributors continue to pitch ideas and people continue to attend our events, this seems like positive feedback... EPWe have a very rigorous editorial process, which most writers tell us they are grateful for. We think of the process of editing and developing a piece of writing as a conversation. Of course, not all writers agree, and the back and forth can be trying. CAWe're still working on getting our first pieces out so I have very little to say, other than that I think people are interested in editing experiences that becomes a discourse in itself. (A behind the scenes one). Has your targeted audience ever expanded or changed throughout your publication's history? EPWe have been in publication for 17 years, and the Internet has dramatically expanded our scope for a mostly Los Angeles-area audience. It's hard to know exactly who is reading us where, but our website has more readers than our printed journal. COOur original target audience in 2007 was mainly the artist and visual art community in Baltimore. At this point, we would like to include a wider demographic in our readership for one main reason: artists need an audience beyond their immediate circle. I think the art world is too insular and this does no one any favors. RFWe are mostly read by artists, other writers, administrators in the arts, etc. I totally agree about insularity. We have always tried to reach a general audience because of that. TLI couldn't agree more. And I worry (sorry!) that in many cases, criticism (and the jargon that comes along with it) necessarily limits the audience for contemporary art. COI think Artspeak is deliberately exclusive. I find this offensive for a number of reasons, but mainly because it separates art and artists from the majority of the population. RFWe're anti-jargon. CAI think few writers would say that they want writing to be dense and “for artist's only” these days, but definitely there's a balance to be found. Some conversations shouldn't skip out on language specificity or important historical references for the sake of catering to someone who isn't interested in learning while reading. EPSome of the writing in our journal is heavy and theoretical, some of it much more accessible. There's room for a range of styles and approaches, even conflicting ones. COAt BmoreArt we want to be inclusive of a wide range of readers, so we write in a conversational and professional style. Our writers keep the reader in mind and our content reaches out to them in the common vernacular without dumbing down the message. TLAnd I think it's important to introduce critical theory into arts writing for artists as it makes them more discerning and aware creative people. But I'm not sure it's a great way to expand your audience.... RFSo how can you grow audience? Do events help? COI think events definitely help and this is why we have started sponsoring them. RFWe give tours of the alternative art scene and give lectures at the art colleges and public libraries, etc. It's about audience, not the money. COOn events, some are for fundraising and others more for publicity and casting a wide net. We started a partnership with a local indie radio station, WTMD, curating a few exhibits and concert events with them.But we also have a modest speaker series at the Lord Baltimore Hotel which generates some funding. We are also planning an ART PROM for the spring. TLWe used to have an exhibition and performance space in Greenwich Village, at which we did a bunch of stuff, from launch parties to artists' panel discussions to screenings and concerts. We also do a fair amount of programming with other institutions in NYC. TLIt truly does grow your audience, and it's a wonderful way to interact directly with your readership. EPWe are published by the non-profit Project X Foundation for Art and Criticism. In the last few years, the organization has branched out into events and other programming. I do think it's been helpful in growing our audience. RFWe just got a grant for a community arts project. That's a new direction—not sure if it's sustainable, but it's a great program. CAI'm involved in a recently started project space in the Seton Hill neighborhood of Baltimore called “bb.” We are planning on intertwining some of the programming and the publication's goals with that. RFWe are going to have a guest editor take over Artblog this Spring. I don't know what it will be like—the guest editor is an artist and it will be an art project. Has anybody worked with guest editors? CAI haven't, Roberta, but a group that I had spoken with a bit before starting Post-Office Arts Journal is called Chicago Artist Writers, by Sofia Leiby and Jason Lazarus. They have it embedded into their process to conduct pieces by selecting the show, the writer, and the editor. I think it's a really nice way to remove your hand from it. COI am curious about print vs. web and if this has an impact on audience? JTWhen we started The Third Rail, we were going to keep it in print; only print, no web. But that approach was out of touch with the times. Contributors and readers alike have requested the immediate and perpetual access offered by the web, as opposed to the strict periodicity of print, so the question then became: what can we do on the website that we can't do in print? So when organizing the issues I invite certain contributors to present special audio and video projects on the website. EPJonathan, I'm really interested in that question about how a print publication can best utilize the web. We recently uploaded our entire archive online and made it available for free, which is exciting. But I wonder what comes next? We haven't had the staff or bandwidth to do much else yet. COI think it's interesting that Art in America, Art News, etc. now have online content that is separate from their print publications. It seems all publications need to head in both directions. CAJonathan, I like that emphasis on print, too, but I understand that everyone is connected at all times of the day now. I picked up The Third Rail at the NY Art Book Fair this Fall and wasn't familiar with it before. I feel like one aspect of print is that it's easier to invite readers who are unfamiliar with your publication. Everyone has their web routine at this point—a few websites that they check daily—so adding a new one might not be something they're interested in. A physical object can rest anywhere until it is picked up again. JTOver 35,000 people attended the NY Art Book Fair in September, which broke MoMA PS1's attendance record. This says something about the persistence of print culture, despite the tyranny of screens. TLWhen ESOPUS started, everyone looked at me like I was crazy—‘Why are you doing a publication that is so resolutely print—based NOW?’ But about 4-5 years ago, it became clear that there is a ‘boutique’ market for print publications. People crave the materiality. COI think a physical object can be much more powerful than an online one, but the challenge is getting it in the hands of your audience. We would like to create a print publication, but the idea of distribution is daunting. RFWe specifically chose online to avoid the distribution issues. We do think of making a Best Of book. COAre there distribution models for art periodicals that work better than others? TLPrint distribution is a nightmare. I'm sure Jonathan and Elizabeth can attest to this. EPI don't feel that we've yet to solve the distribution problem. JTIt's expensive. Which makes it very difficult for a nonprofit publication that's offered to readers free of charge. TLAt the end of the day, you really have to consider distribution as a marketing tool. It's virtually impossible to make money when you have to deal with a wholesaler or distributor. COHow do you do it? CAYeah, Jonathan, is that all donation based? JTWe usually take a hostage and send out ransom notes until we get the issue distributed. COMaybe that model will work in Baltimore? CAOh f Jonathan, they're publishing this. JTRats—busted. TLFinally, a viable strategy! Seriously, we've found that going with smaller distributors (Ubiquity and D.A.P. in NYC, for example) tends to get the magazine into the right stores and bookshops. But you need the big wholesalers to get into Barnes and Noble and larger chains. EPWe used to be available for free, until we launched our “X-TRA: On the floor no more!” campaign. I hate to sound so bourgeois, but we realized that people value what they pay for. We still distribute to schools for free, and like I said, past issues are free online. COI think people do value objects more when they cost something! TLThat's a really good point, Elizabeth. We sell ESOPUS for much less than it costs to produce, but as we've increased the price (from $10 to $20 over the past decade), our sales have actually increased, which surprised me. EPInteresting, Tod. We're only ten bucks, maybe we need to go up! We have a few minutes left. What are your hopes for the future of art writing? RFThat a funder will step up and create independent critical writing incubators and fund them. More collaborations between publications. CAI think it's important for the smaller arts communities to have art writing so that the things that are happening are being documented with the same consideration that's put into them. Having a network of cross pollinating, small arts communities with increased awareness of each other is a tool to be used for good. JTThat writers get paid in a timely fashion for the work they do, which is sadly undervalued. COI would like to see more professional mentorship programs for young writers and more funding opportunities. The Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant Program is great, but there should be more. When writers can't make a living, they aren't able to hone their craft over time. This loss of experience is evident in the quality of writing available. RFA Works Progress Administration (WPA) for arts writers. COIndependent funding would be ideal, rather than commercial! EPI think Jonathan and Cara make a good point. I suspect that the free labor market that is the Internet has made art writing even less remunerative than it used to be. But there has to be a creative solution to the problem! Jonathan Thomas “It may be true that there is an imperial logic at play in the art world, where global cities tend, or have tended in the past, to dominate the discursive field. But I think we're also in the midst of a moment where interesting publishing projects are emerging all over the place.” Cara Ober “I write about the projects I love or hate. Usually if I attempt to write about something I feel lukewarm about, the writing is the same” Elizabeth Pulsinelli “There's room for a range of styles and approaches, even conflicting ones.” Tod Lippy “At the end of the day, you really have to consider distribution as a marketing tool. It's virtually impossible to make money when you have to deal with a wholesaler or distributor.” Colin Alexander “Having a network of cross pollinating, small arts communities with increased awareness of each other is a tool to be used for good.” Jerry Litofsky The Boom-and-Bust Era of Magazines in America During the 1960s, '70s, and '80s some of the most exciting, inspiring, and innovative publications came into being. This was an adventurous and prolific period for publishers. New formats, sizes, typographic styles, printing techniques, and delivery systems were experimented with, modified, adopted, and some even endured. Publishers and advertisers took risks with editors and designers who invented unique magazines, trade journals, tabloids, and unexpected new forms of printed periodicals. Those publications that were too stubborn to surrender to publishing's new wave made efforts to redesign. This was a remarkably creative time for artists (remember abstract expressionism and pop art?); the novelty of fashion design attracted young Americans to compete with the aging stars of French and Italian ateliers; and of course, popular music soared beyond traditional swing and rockand-roll to west-coast jazz and new folk genres. Literature, too, finally came into the 20th century, with the resurgence of concrete poetry, the new popularity of the Beats, and finally, recognition of the style we called stream-of-consciousness. The introduction of Polaroid instant photography, more functional camera design, imaginative darkroom experiments, and unexpected color film upgrades all provided incentives for powerful pictures as well as more subtle imagery for art directors to work with on page layouts. The printing industry, meanwhile, had been advancing as well. Old-fashioned letterpress methods (raised metal type and images inked and pressed onto paper) became almost obsolete by the widespread development of offset lithography (aluminum printing plates transferred type and images onto inked rollers which then rolled the inked page onto paper). As newspapers, magazines, and other forms of reading matter progr
Speaker Series Toggle navigation The Contemporary About Programs Projects Speaker Series Scroll Get Your Life! Resources Grit Fund Artist Retreat Support Shop in Baltimore, MD The Contemporary, Baltimore, MD. Speaker Series. Our annual Speaker Series brings internationally-recognized artists, critics, and art professionals to Baltimore to inspire, awe, and challenge our home audience. Each year the theme shifts to reflect contemporary practices and trends. All lectures are free and held at the Baltimore School for the Arts, located at 712 Cathedral Street (unless otherwise noted). Upcoming. 2017-18: Interiors. Interiors, our 2017-18 Speaker Series, looks inside exciting artist practices by centering the significant relationships between artists and their collaborators, subjects, friends, and families that make creative production possible. Interiors: Stephanie Dinkins + Bina48 & Bruce Duncan; Love at the Edges of Personhood Tuesday October 17, 2017 7pm, Doors Close at 6:45pm Baltimore School for the Arts 712 Cathedral Street Baltimore, MD, 21201 Register Here Past. 2016-17: CoHosts II. CoHosts II returned to lectures hosted in partnership with artist-run platforms including galleries, spaces, collectives, and festivals who we asked: Who is the one artist or art professional that you want The Contemporary to bring to Baltimore? The Yes Men CoHosted with The Transmodern Festival November 28, 2016 Kimberly Drew CoHosted with Platform Gallery December 12, 2016 Jenna Wortham CoHosted with KAHLON, The Agency April 28, 2017 Sharon Hayes CoHosted with Penthouse Gallery May 16, 2017 Raúl de Nieves CoHosted with Terrault Gallery May 30, 2017 The Yes Men + Transmodern Festival Monday, November 28 7pm Lecture Baltimore School for the Arts Kimberly Drew + Platform Gallery Monday, December 12 7pm Lecture Baltimore School for the Arts Jenna Wortham + KAHLON, The Agency Saturday, April 29 5-7pm Eubie Blake Cultural Center Sharon Hayes + Penthouse Gallery Tuesday, May 16 7–10pm, 7pm Lecture Baltimore School for the Arts Raúl de Nieves + Terrrault Gallery Tuesday, May 30 7–9pm, 7pm Lecture Baltimore School for the Arts Archive. 2015–16: Talking Shop. Talking Shop partnered acclaimed artists and professionals from various disciplines to discuss the nexus of art, science, medicine, technology, politics, and more. Art + Activism Tania Bruguera + Eddie Conway moderated by Lionel Foster Recorded Thursday, March 10 Craft + Defiance Joyce J. Scott + Marquis Revlon moderated by Lee Heinemann Recorded Tuesday, November 17 Humor + Absurdity Jerry Saltz + Stavros Halkias moderated by Lu Zhang Recorded Wednesday, September 30 Health + Inequity LaToya Ruby Frazier + Dr. Lisa Cooper moderated by Elissa Blount-Moorhead Recorded Monday, June 29 3D Printing + Access Adam Metallo/Vince Rossi + Dwyer Kilcollin moderated by Ginevra Shay Recorded Thursday, May 21 2014–15: CoHosts. CoHosts was organized with thirteen local commercial, artist-run, and independent galleries. Each gallery responded to a simple question: Who is the one artist or art professional that you want The Contemporary to bring to Baltimore? Tamms Year Ten CoHosted with John Fonda Gallery Recorded Tuesday, February 17 Letha Wilson CoHosted with ICA Baltimore Recorded Thursday, January 29 Guerrilla Girls CoHosted with Area 405 Recorded Thursday, October 23 Sanford Biggers CoHosted with Gallery Four Recorded Wednesday, October 8 Jacob Khepler CoHosted with Open Space Recorded Wednesday, September 24 Andrew W.K. CoHosted with Current Space Recorded Thursday, September 4 Shinique Smith CoHosted with Galerie Myrtis Recorded Thursday, May 1 Type A CoHosted with Lease Agreement Recorded Monday, April 21 Jon Rafman CoHosted with Springsteen Gallery Recorded Wednesday, April 2 Wayne White CoHosted with Gallery CA Recorded Thursday, March 27 Brendan Fowler CoHosted with Nudashank Recorded Wednesday, March 5 Nick Cave CoHosted with Pinebox Art Center Recorded Tuesday, February 18 Coco Fusco CoHosted with Guest Spot Recorded Monday, January 13