RENO, NV.- The Nevada Museum of Art has been awarded more than $180,000 in grants from four nationally recognized foundations: the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), the Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation and WESTAF: The Western States Arts Federation. These new national funding sources, combined with the steadfast support of local donors and friends, enable the Museum to continue providing ambitious exhibitions and initiatives.
“We are extremely pleased that the Museum’s high caliber exhibitions, publications and educational programs are drawing the attention and support of national funders,” said David Walker, Executive Director | CEO, Nevada Museum of Art. “The Nevada Museum of Art recognizes that in order to succeed during these challenging economic times, we must diversify our funding sources by looking to foundations and sponsorship opportunities at the national level. These recent grants prove that the Museum is not only capturing the attention of donors from across the US, but building and developing relationships that will serve us in the future.”
A grant of $100,000 was awarded to the Museum by the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, the first time the Foundation has awarded funds to the Museum. The grant will go to support the Museum’s art + environment initiatives including educational and exhibition programming. The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts was established in 1987. In accordance with Andy Warhol's will, its mission is the advancement of the visual arts. The New York-based Foundation is focused primarily on supporting work of a challenging and often experimental nature, while noting that the interpretation of those terms may vary from place to place and culture to culture.
To support the Museum’s 2011 exhibition and publication titled The Altered Landscape, the National Endowment for the Arts awarded a $25,000 grant. The NEA’s Access to Artistic Excellence grant encourages and supports artistic creativity, preserves our diverse cultural heritage, and makes the arts more widely available in communities throughout the country. The NEA is a public agency dedicated to supporting excellence in the arts, both new and established; bringing the arts to all Americans; and providing leadership in arts education. Established by Congress in 1965 as an independent agency of the federal government, the Endowment is the nation's largest annual funder of the arts.
Also in support of The Altered Landscape exhibition and publication series, the Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation provided a $10,000 grant to the Museum. The famous American photographer Robert Mapplethorpe established the not-for-profit Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation on May 27, 1988, some ten months before his death, to protect his work, to advance his creative vision and to promote the causes he cared about. In keeping with Mapplethorpe's wishes, The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation has funded numerous publications on photography, supported exhibitions at various art institutions, and provided grants to art institutions ranging from the world's major art museums to small university galleries. This is the first grant the Nevada Museum of Art has received from this prestigious national foundation.
