Giving Compass' Take:
- Nell Daniel and Joseph Peralta examine how art can support grantmaking which prioritizes equity, justice and inclusion globally.
- Why is art so often underfunded? How can art help inspire examination of root causes and systems change?
- Learn more about arts and culture philanthropy.
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How might art inspire grantmaking that improves global food access, healthcare, economic opportunity, clean energy and combat climate change? Those are the questions that drove The Rockefeller Foundation to take a uniquely innovative approach to selecting its permanent installation of artwork for its newly renovated 420 Fifth Avenue headquarters.
In an effort to embody its values of equity, inclusion, collaboration, transparency, social justice, and innovation, The Rockefeller Foundation hired the curatorial team SGJ Co-Lab to curate the artwork for their newly renovated space.
This team of ten artists, scholars and curators represent diverse cultures, ethnicities, and gender as well as expertise in contemporary art from Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, Latin America, First Nations, Europe and North America, and Folk Art traditions.
Their goal was to curate an exhibit that embodies The Rockefeller Foundation’s belief that visual artists can identify issues, imagine solutions and inspire change.
The result is an installation of 32 artworks that champions emerging and mid-career artists whose work expands our perceptions and understanding of the challenges and opportunities for our shared humanity in this current moment.
Works by Mitchell Squire and Eric Hart, for instance, encourage us to: “question identity and nation-state logic, while creating fluid alternative cartographies that reject settler colonial ways of ‘seeing’ and ‘being,’ while disrupting mainstream expectations and monolithic notions of ‘the other’ in ways that don’t allow for easy commodification of well-trodden ‘diversity and inclusion’ viewpoints,” said SGJ Co-Lab member Zun Lee.
Iranian artist Ghazaleh Avarzarmani’s ‘Fortune Teller’ conveys how innocent-seeming children’s games can lead to the construction of rules, laws and systems of dominant power structures. Similarly, Iranian artist Tannaz Farsi produced a steel sculpture of the word ‘Citizen’ in English. Made with a dissolving typeface resembling Arabic script in order to playfully disrupt the semantics of the word, it provokes consideration about those living under state-sanctioned control.
Read the full article about art and values-based grantmaking by Nell Daniel and Joseph Peralta at Rockefeller Foundation.