robbinschilds perform C.L.U.E. at TBA:09. Photo: Carole Zoom.
The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts has awarded PICA a $100,000, 2-year grant in support of the 2010 and 2011 Time-Based Art Festivals. This grant comes in recognition of PICA’s cross-disciplinary programming and community engagement.
According to the Foundation’s website:
“Over the past seven years, the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art has secured a prominent place in the public imagination by curating one of the most dynamic multi-disciplinary events in Portland, the annual Time-Based Art Festival (TBA).”
“…Perhaps most impressive of all, however, is the way TBA manages to activate public, non-art spaces that bring the city into the Festival and the Festival into the city. This past year, the Festival’s late-night programming and ON SIGHT visual arts installations were both staged in the re-purposed Washington High School, and Australia’s Back to Back Theater performed its riveting Small Metal Objects to an audience wearing headphones in the middle of a bustling outdoor lunch crowd in Pioneer Square. By presenting work in diverse neighborhoods and alternative spaces, PICA is able to engage broad, new audiences in contemporary art.”
This assessment was shared by TBA:09 artist Antoine Catala, who described his Festival experience by saying that,
“TBA is unique in the US, because it encompasses multi-disciplinary forms of art that lead to natural cross-pollinations. It felt like the whole city mobilized around PICA, because the festival gathers so many volunteers and so many events in a short period of time. The whole experience felt like an amazing communal effort.”
We are honored to be the only Foundation award recipient in the region, and are excited to apply this funding towards another two years of leading-edge programming!
About the Andy Warhol Foundation for 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.
The primary focus of the Foundation’s grant making activity has been to support the creation, presentation and documentation of contemporary visual art, particularly work that is experimental, under-recognized, or challenging in nature.
For more information, please visit the Warhol Foundation’s Awarded Grant’s Page.
Fantastic News! ART FTW!