| CHICAGO,
IL - January 28, 2008 - The Joyce Foundation is proud to announce the 5th
Annual Joyce Awards, which support Midwest cultural institutions
to commission works by artists of color. With this announcement, the Foundation
has now awarded one million dollars to leading Midwestern arts organizations
and presenters.
Grants of
$50,000 will be awarded to Public Art Saint Paul in St. Paul, MN,
to support the commission of a six-mile outdoor photography installation
by photographer Wing Young Huie; Ragamala Music and Dance Theater
in Minneapolis, MN, to support the commission of a new collaborative dance
work by master Balinese choreographer, dancer, composer and musician I
Dewa Putu Berata; the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, MN,
to commission a new multi-media performance work by hip-hop theater artist
Marc Bamuthi Joseph; and Cuyahoga Community College (Tri-C)
in Cleveland, OH, for the commission of a new jazz score by vibraphonist
and composer Cecilia Smith. The announcement is being made this
evening by Joyce Foundation President Ellen Alberding at the annual
celebratory gathering at The Arts Club of Chicago.
Launched
in 2004 as a yearly competition, the Joyce Awards target
cultural organizations in Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, Indianapolis, Milwaukee,
and St. Paul/Minneapolis. While the Chicago-based Joyce Foundation has
long provided major funding to Chicago-area cultural institutions, the
establishment of the Joyce Awards marked the expansion of
its culture grant-making to other Midwest cities. To date, 20 organizations
have received a noted Joyce Award.
Ten works
made possible by the Joyce Awards have thus far been completed.
Those works include 2004 awardees Cleveland Art Museum (Trenton
Doyle Hancock, visual art installation Moments in Mound History),
Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra (Roberto Sierra, classical composition
La Salsa No. 3) and St. Paul Chamber Orchestra (Chinary
Ung, classical composition Tears of Rain); 2005 awardees University
of Illinois, Chicago/Gallery 400 (Edgar Arceneaux, multi-media installation
The Alchemy of Comedy) and Columbia College Dance Center
(Lin Hwai-Min, choreography Cursive III); 2006 awardees Chicago
Cultural Center (Nick Cave, visual art installation Sound Suits)
and American Composers Forum (Jerod Impichchaachaaha' Tate, classical
composition Serenade for Nitoshi); and 2007 awardees Detroit
Institute of Arts (Julie Mehretu, visual art exhibition City Sitings),
Joffrey Ballet in collaboration with Luna Negra Dance Theater
(Pedro Ruiz, choreography Allegro con Sabor) and Wayne State
University (Tyree Guyton, sculpture installation Invisible Doors
and companion visual art exhibition Street Sense: Celebrating 20 Years
of the Heidelberg Project).
"For
five years, the Joyce Awards has connected exceptional artists with cultural
institutions and diverse audiences," says Joyce Foundation President
Ellen S. Alberding. "We are proud of our role in bringing innovative
works of art to communities throughout the Midwest, and are excited to
continue this work."
The Joyce Awards grants are made directly to arts organizations
and are awarded in dance, music, theater, and visual arts. This year's
competition drew 30 entries from around the region. Projects were reviewed
by independent arts advisors from outside the Midwest and voted on by
the Foundation's board in December 2007. Each award supports the work
of the individual artist as well as significant community engagement efforts.
MEET THE
2008 JOYCE AWARD-WINNING INSTITUTIONS AND ARTISTS:
Visual
Art
Established
in 1987, Public Art Saint Paul works with public agencies and private
institutions to commission new public art works; clean and restore historic
works of public art; produces an annual outdoor sculpture exhibition;
hosts youth arts education programs; and presents workshops and forums
that explore place-making ideas of citizens, artists and designers.
Wing Young Huie is an award-winning photographer who has received
international attention for his many projects that document the changing
cultural landscape of his home state, Minnesota. Huie's photographs have
been exhibited at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, the Minnesota
Museum of American Art, the Asian American Arts Center in New York, and
the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, and are presently featured
in the traveling exhibition Race, organized by the Science Museum
of Minnesota. Huie has been the recipient of a McKnight Photography Fellowship
and a Bush Artist Fellowship and in 2000 was named "Artist of the
Year" by the Minneapolis Star Tribune. Two books have been
published based on Huie's images: Frogtown: Photographs and Conversations
in an Urban Neighborhood and Lake Street USA - Huie's best-known
work and one of Minnesota's most significant public art projects in recent
memory.
The Joyce Award will support Public Art Saint Paul to commission Huie
to create University Avenue USA, a six-mile outdoor "gallery"
of hundreds of photographs that documents neighborhoods along University
Avenue. Huie will spend 28 months photographing the everyday lives of
citizens in the various neighborhoods connected by this singular street.
In 2010, the photographs will be part of a six-month-long public exhibition,
with images projected on store windows along University Avenue in 12 locations.
During the exhibition, Huie will host outdoor community events with photographs
projected on portable screens set up in open spaces. Public Art Saint
Paul will also establish an interactive Web site for the project, providing
a blog for comments and reactions that would be archived.
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Dance
Founded in 1992, Ragamala Music and Dance Theater (Ranee Ramaswamy
and Aparna Ramaswamy, Artistic Directors) performs Bharatanatyam, a classical
dance form from Southern India, while incorporating contemporary themes
and diverse influences from around the world. Ragamala has performed for
international audiences across the globe, including the Van Wezel Performing
Arts Hall (Sarasota, FL), Bali Arts Festival (Denpasar, Indonesia), The
Lied Center (Lawrence, KS), The New Jersey Performing Arts Center (Newark,
NJ), and the New Victory Theater, an off-Broadway venue in New York City.
Ragamala has produced over 20 new works and has collaborated with U.S.
and international artists of diverse backgrounds, including Chinese pipa
virtuoso Gao Hong, New Delhi-based sitarist Shubhendra Rao, Milwaukee's
African dance troupe Ko-Thi Dance, Chicago based jazz musician Howard
Levy, Taiko drumming group Wadaiko Ensemble Tokara (Nagano, Japan), Uri
Sands and Toni Pierce-Sands (Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater), Western
classical composer Ruth MacKenzie, and Bali-based artist I Dewa Putu Berata.
I Dewa Putu Berata was born into a family of musicians and painters
in the village of Pengosekan, Ubud, Bali and is an accomplished musician,
composer, dancer, and visual artist. He is the founding director of Çudamani,
a professional performance company comprised of thirty-one skillful musicians
and dancers that perform a diverse repertoire of rare, classical Balinese
traditional dance as well as highly creative instrumental works. The company
is one of Bali's finest performing arts groups and through its international
touring schedule has become a cultural ambassador for Bali. Berata has
twice been a fellow with UCLA's Center for Intercultural Performance's
Asia Pacific Performance Exchange and is involved in collaborative works
with esteemed artists from Italy, Japan, Canada, and the United States.
The Joyce Award will support Ragamala Music and Dance Theater to commission
I Dewa Putu Berata to create and present a global collaboration with Berata's
Çudamani ensemble. The piece entitled Dhvee (Duality) will
be the second new work created jointly by the two companies. Dhvee
will have its world premiere at the Bali Arts Festival in the capital
city of Denpasar and in late 2009 or early 2010. Berata's Çudamani
together with Ragamala will present the U.S. premiere in the Twin Cities.
Dhvee will also be featured in Ragamala's national touring schedule
during its 2009/2010 season.
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Theater
Established in 1927 in Minneapolis, Minnesota, the Walker Art Center
is one of the most visited modern and contemporary art museums in the
country. It is recognized internationally as a model multi-disciplinary
arts organization and is a national leader for its innovative approaches
to audience engagement. Its groundbreaking artist residency and active
commissioning programs have established significant relationships with
a range of artists now considered masters such as Merce Cunningham, Philip
Glass, Twyla Tharp, Bill T. Jones, Liz Lerman, Ralph Lemon, David Byrne,
and many others.
Marc Bamuthi Joseph, originally from New York City and currently
living in Oakland, California, is an African American hip-hop theater
artist who combines theater, West African and tap dance, spoken word,
poetry, and live music to stretch the limits of traditional hip-hop and
create a new forum for expressive performance art. Bamuthi is a National
Poetry Slam champion, Broadway veteran, a USA Rockefeller Fellow in Theater
Arts in 2006, and has been a featured lecturer and performance artist
at more than one hundred colleges and universities. Bamuthi has performed
with celebrated stars of the spoken word and music scene including: Ben
Harper, Bonnie Raitt, Will Power, Mos Def, Sarah Jones, Sonia Sanchez,
Gil Scott Heron, The Last Poets, Amiri Baraka, Danny Hoch and others.
The Joyce Award will support the Walker Art Center to commission the
break/s, a new theatrical work by Bamuthi. Using hip-hop idioms in
text, dance, music and video, the break/s is a poetic investigation
of personal identity through an examination of hip-hop's global impact.
Bamuthi will work with local teens through partnerships with Minneapolis
community-based organizations and select ten young writers/poets for an
intensive one-week residency. Bamuthi will perform the break/s with
two accomplished on-stage DJ's/musicians, along with a video projection
VJ, at the Walker's McGuire Theater on April 9, 10, and 11, 2008. Other
prestigious venues have already expressed an interest in presenting the
work, including Chicago's Museum of Contemporary Art.
__________________________________________________________________________________________
Music
Cuyahoga Community College (Tri-C) opened in 1963 as Ohio's first
community college. It serves more than 55,000 credit and non-credit students
annually and offers more than 70 career and technical programs and liberal
arts curricula at its three campuses. The Performing Arts Division at
Tri-C has a long history of presenting the arts in a wide variety of disciplines
and to a broad and diverse audience. Since 1980, it has presented the
Tri-C JazzFest Cleveland, which reaches 30,000 to 50,000 people annually
each April. The ten-day event features performances, jazz workshops, clinics,
and educational programs on campus, and at various venues throughout the
Cleveland area. Over its nearly 30-year history, the greatest names in
jazz from Ella Fitzgerald to Miles Davis to Tony Bennett have played to
Cleveland audiences.
Cecilia Smith, born in Cincinnati and raised in Cleveland Heights,
Ohio, is a professional composer, recording artist and performing vibraphonist.
Smith is one of the leading four mallet technique vibraphonists in the
United States. She is the first woman vibraphonist with recordings released
both nationally and internationally, and has performed in concert halls,
nightclubs and festivals throughout North and South America, Europe, Africa
and Asia. Smith attended the Berklee College of Music in Boston earning
a bachelor's degree in Professional Music. In 2003, Smith was commissioned
by the Kennedy Center to bring to life the music of Mary Lou Williams,
widely credited as the first woman of jazz. Smith performed in concert
original compositions inspired by Williams' life, as well as music that
Williams wrote but never performed.
The Joyce Award will support The Performing Arts Division at Cuyahoga
Community College to engage in a multi-year collaborative with Smith.
As part of Tri-C's Creative Campus Project, Smith will have a long-term
residency in Cleveland where she, along with Tri-C students and faculty,
will identify an African American from the Cleveland community as the
subject and inspiration for a new composition. The finished composition,
to be performed by Cleveland musicians and members of the Cecilia Smith
Quintet during the 2009 Jazz Fest, will include spoken word and visual
media. The project will be documented by the Tri-C Media Center, which
operates the campus television station.
Based in Chicago
with assets of $935 million, the Joyce Foundation makes grants of $50 million
a year to support efforts to strengthen public policies in ways that improve
the quality of life in the Great Lakes region. Cultural funding supports
projects that bring diverse audiences together to share common cultural
experiences and encourage more people to see the arts as integral parts
of their lives. The Foundation also makes grants in the areas of Education,
Employment, Environment, Gun Violence Prevention, and Money and Politics.
The 2008
honorees are the fifth set of Joyce Awards winners. Recipients
of the 2007 Joyce Awards were The Detroit Institute of
Arts, for the commission of City Sitings, an exhibition/installation
by visual artist Julie Mehretu; the Guthrie Theater, for
the commission of a new play by playwright Jerome Hairston; the
Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra, for commission of a multi-movement
piece for full orchestra by composer Gabriela Lena Frank; The Joffrey
Ballet, in partnership with Luna Negra Dance Theater, for the
commission of a new ballet by choreographer Pedro Ruiz; and Wayne
State University, for commission of a new sculpture and presentation
of a companion exhibit commemorating the 20th anniversary of the Heidelberg
Project by visual artist Tyree Guyton.
Recipients
of the 2006 Joyce Awards were the American Composers
Forum for the commission of a new concerto by composer Jerod Impichchaachaaha'
Tate; the Chicago Cultural Center Foundation, for the commission
of 20 new works for Nick Cave: Soundsuits, by artist Nick Cave;
DANCECleveland (Cleveland Modern Dance Association), for the commission
of a new dance by choreographer Jawole Willa Jo Zollar; and the
Indiana Repertory Theatre, for the commission of a new play by
playwright Charles Smith.
Recipients
of the 2005 Joyce Awards were Minneapolis' Children's
Theatre Company, for the commission of a play by playwright and performer
Will Power; The Dance Center of Columbia College Chicago,
for the commission of a dance by choreographer Lin Hwai-min and
Cloud Gate Dance Theatre of Taiwan; and Gallery 400 at the University
of Illinois at Chicago, for the commission of a short film by artist
Edgar Arceneaux.
Recipients
of the inaugural Joyce Awards in 2004 were the Cleveland
Museum of Art, for an installation by visual artist Trenton Doyle
Hancock; Chicago's Goodman Theatre, for a play by playwright
Naomi Iizuka; the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, for a symphonic
composition by composer Roberto Sierra; and the Saint Paul Chamber
Orchestra, for a work by composer Chinary Ung.
For more
information on applying for a 2009 Joyce Awards or to learn
more about the Joyce Foundation, please visit www.joycefdn.org or call
312.782.2464. Further details about the performances funded by the Joyce
Awards are provided on the accompanying "Joyce Awards Completed
and Upcoming Performances" document and on the Foundation's website,
www.joycefdn.org.
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