Milwaukee, WI – Sept. 30, 2014 – Using art to explore their perception of home, nearly 2,000 Milwaukee students will participate in special artist residencies in 2014-15 through Arts@Large with support from the Greater Milwaukee Foundation’s Mary L. Nohl Fund.
Students in grades K-3 through 12th at five Milwaukee Public Schools will be working with local artists to develop art exhibitions and performances informed by their research on the cultural and racial implications of Milwaukee’s housing history. Participating schools include 81st Street School, Bruce Elementary School, Hampton Elementary School, Hayes Bilingual School and Washington High School.
The project received a $25,000 grant from the Greater Milwaukee Foundation, with $15,000 provided through its Nohl Fund, $8,300 from its Krellwitz Fund and $1,700 from its Jean Hutchinson Arts Fund. The Greater Milwaukee Foundation has awarded Arts@Large more than $250,000 in grants for numerous projects since 2005.
Arts@Large connects arts to academics through partnerships among the arts community, K-12 educators and students, public policy makers, and colleges and universities. The organization engages at least 120 artists annually, and approximately half are people of color.
As part of its project, There’s no Place Like Home: Milwaukee, Arts@Large is collaborating with community partners to institute a public discussion series on issues related to homelessness, the effect of segregation on housing in Milwaukee, and opportunities and strategies related to building healthy neighborhoods.
The project will culminate with art exhibitions in conjunction with Milwaukee’s Gallery Night April 25-26, 2015, which will be free to the public at the organization’s Gallery@Large space, 908 S. 5th St.
The Greater Milwaukee Foundation awarded $150,000 to 13 visual arts projects during its third fiscal quarter from the Nohl Fund and other Foundation funds. Other funded projects include:
Artists Working in Education: $12,000 to support a series of eight visual arts and language workshops at each branch of the Milwaukee Public Library system based on the successful model of AWE’s Truck Studio, the organization’s mobile art program.
Express Yourself Milwaukee: $12,000 for a partnership with ArtWorks Milwaukee on an art-making and job readiness project. Through the joint program designed to build strong work ethic and simulate a job experience, 18 teens will participate in internships with professional artists while also gaining an opportunity to mentor younger youth from Mary McLeod Bethune Academy.
La Casa de Esperanza: $12,000 to support an opportunity for 30 youth to work with professional artist Lucia Mendoza to create two murals and 10 paintings. The art will be placed in nonprofit agencies throughout Waukesha, which will also offer volunteer opportunities to participating students.
Latino Arts: $12,000 for the organization’s 2014-15 exhibition season, featuring art produced during the four-year Advancing Literacy and Math through Art (ALMA) program, which engaged students from Bruce Guadalupe Community School and artists from UWM Peck School of the Arts. Latino Arts’ exhibition season will also include residencies by Milwaukee artists Pacia Sallomi and Vivian Vivas.
TRUE Skool: $12,000 to support the visual arts component of TRUE Skool’s Urban Arts Program, though which teen participants receive mentoring in both art-making and the business side of the arts.
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Foundation: $12,000 supporting Placing the Golden Spike: Landscapes of the Anthropocene, an exhibition and educational project bringing together the work of nine contemporary artists whose art practice explores the impact of human industry on the earth. The project will be administered by INOVA, UWM’s Institute of Visual Arts.
Diverse & Resilient: $10,000 to support expansion of an artist-in-residence program serving LGBT youth and adults in Milwaukee. Two to three local artists will work with approximately 80 participants drawn from Milwaukee schools and nonprofit organizations.
Grand Avenue Club: $10,000 to support mentoring for adults with mental illness participating in the Club’s arts programming. The project includes creation of a website for promoting the art of members and teaching entrepreneurial skills.
Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design: $10,000 toward an exhibition titled Engendered that will feature the work of 25 local, regional, national and international artists exploring the concept of personal and gender identity, to be curated by Niki Johnson, MIAD faculty member and the Pfister Hotel’s artist-in-residence. An educational component includes panel discussions, artist talks and workshops.
Walker’s Point Center for the Arts: $10,000 in support of culturally diverse art exhibitions as well as arts education programs that engage more than 11,000 youth and adults on site and 10,000 individuals off-site at schools, parks and service organizations.
Ruach: $8,000 to help expand Project: VITAL, a visual arts initiative imbued with positive values and targeting new populations in schools in need of external arts programming. About 150 students are projected to participate in visual arts residencies.
Our Next Generation: $5,000 supporting the creation of murals, mosaics and other outdoor art to personalize the new playground on the organization’s grounds. Approximately 300 students are expected to contribute artistically to the project, which also includes opportunities to design interior art for the space.
The Mary L. Nohl Fund was created in 1995 to support local visual arts and arts education programs. Mary L. Nohl, the renowned local artist who died in 2001, enlarged her fund with a $9.2 million bequest, one of the largest individual gifts in the Greater Milwaukee Foundation’s history. Since 2001, the fund has made grants of more than $6.4 million in support of visual arts and arts education in the metropolitan area.
The Greater Milwaukee Foundation is a family of more than 1,200 individual charitable funds, each created by donors to serve the local charitable causes of their choice. Grants from these funds serve people throughout Milwaukee, Waukesha, Ozaukee and Washington counties and beyond. Started in 1915, the Foundation is one of the oldest and largest community foundations in the world.
