chicago

MacArthur awarded new grants to 13 Chicago arts and culture nonprofits to conduct collaborations with arts organizations in 12 countries.  The grants are provided through MacArthur’s International Connections Fund, which aims to help Chicago nonprofit arts and culture organizations advance their work by collaborating with peer organizations abroad. 

 
“Sharing artistic experiences and promoting cross-cultural learning can help inform, engage, and entertain audiences and bring fresh perspectives to the creative organizations involved,” said MacArthur President Robert Gallucci. 
 
The following organizations will receive International Connections Fund grants:
 
  • Chicago a cappella – $18,500 in support of a musical and cultural exchange between artistic director Jonathan Miller and composer, choral director, and conductor Jorge Cordoba Valencia, a premier choral composer and director in Mexico.
  • Chicago Cultural Alliance – $40,000 for the cultural exchange of representatives of the Alliance’s Swedish American Museum, Chinese-American Museum, and Ukrainian Institute of Modern Art with ethnic museums in their home countries. 
  • Contratiempo – $20,000 to collaborate with the bilingual alternative culture magazine Humanize, based in Madrid, Spain.  Each will contribute to the other’s publication.
  • Every House Has a Door – $32,500  to expand a Bristol, UK performance piece to include material developed from the Randolph Street Gallery Archive, held at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, through artist and performer residencies.
  • Fulcrum Point New Music Project – $50,000 to support the collaborative creation of a new work fusing western classical and Indian classical music by Fulcrum Point, the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group, composer Param Vir, Fulcrum Point Artistic Director Stephen Burns, and sarod virtuoso, Soumik Datta.
  • Global Girls – $45,000 in support of a cross-cultural residency.  Girls from the South Side will share their techniques in using the performing arts to help learn new skills with students of Kattaikkutte Sangam, a residential performing arts school outside of Chennai, India.
  • Hedwig Dances – $50,000 for a collaborative exchange with DanzAbierta dance company of Havana, Cuba to jointly choreograph two dances that will be performed in both countries.
  • Latinos Progresando – $40,000 to establish an ongoing cross-cultural exchange between Chicago’s Little Village and Centro Cultural Bacaanda arts organization in Oaxaca, Mexico.  The experience will be developed into a theater piece.
  • Live the Spirit Residency – $45,000 to support a jazz education and composition exchange with London-based artist education and development group Tomorrow’s Warriors who will perform two specially commissioned original works at the Englewood Jazz Festival in Chicago and the Lively Up Festival in London.
  • portoluz – $50,000 in support of an exchange and performances of son jarocho music in Chicago, Berwyn, and Cicero between musicians from Chicago and Veracruz, Mexico.
  • Puerto Rican Arts Alliance – $40,000 to support an ongoing international collaboration with the Puerto Rican Philharmonic Orchestra and Quique Domenech, a master musician and teacher of the cuatro, a traditional instrument of Puerto Rico.
  • Silk Road Rising – $50,000 for collaboration with the American University of Beirut and the Lebanese American University in Beirut to translate, adapt, and present a staged reading by Syrian playwright Saadallah Wannus.
  • threewalls – $22,000 to jointly curate a series of exhibitions with Or Gallery Vancouver and Or Gallery Berlin highlighting visual artists and work from the three cities.

 

International Connections Fund grants are limited to Chicago area nonprofit arts and culture organizations and other nonprofits with well-established arts programs that received a grant within the last three years from MacArthur or though the MacArthur Funds established at the Driehaus and Prince Foundations or through the New Communities Program directed by LISC/Chicago.  Learn more about MacArthur's International Connections Fund.
 
MacArthur awards more than $8 million annually to more than 200 arts and culture groups in Chicago and the region as an expression of its civic commitment to the place where the Foundation has its headquarters and where John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur made their home.  Grants are designed to help sustain the cultural life of the city and region.