For many artists and organizations, LEF Foundation's change in funding priorities has reduced and limited opportunities for funding in New England. The good news is that Louisa McCall, formerly of LEF, and Marie Cieri, are co-directing a new project called "Artists In Context."
Their announcement says that "AIC focuses on socially engaged emerging art forms, reflecting the times and the unique set of circumstances that make Boston and New England fertile territory for idea-generation, problem-solving, experimentation, innovation and change."
"Artists In Context" was formed with seed money from LEF, and is designed to advance will build on the learning of the "Contemporary Work Fund" that LEF concluded this past year.
McCall and Cieri are looking to have the project off the ground by 2010, their announcement says. "With LEF’s seed investment, we will spend the next eight months formalizing the organization, building a website [www.artistsincontext.org], creating databases, and producing a major planning seminar for national and Boston–area artists and thinkers to critique and gain new perspectives on the Artists in Context concept and plan.
Our first full year of operation will be 2010. Our goals for that year will be to produce a multimedia Artists’ Prospectus for the Nation, through which artists and other creative thinkers will propose innovative ways to engage with the critical debates of our time, and one or two artist projects that demonstrate the collaborative, multidisciplinary, and research–based practices that characterize an important component of contemporary art production."
More on this as it develops.
Note: this post has been updated slightly to clarify meaning since it was originally posted.
