Mission
ARTSPACE, a non-profit organization that presents local, national, and international visual art, by providing access, excellence, and education to the benefit of the public and the greater arts community. Its mission:
- Catalyze artistic activities;
- Connect contemporary artists, audiences, and
resources; and
- Enrich art experiences and activate art "spaces".
Background
Artspace is a contemporary art gallery and non-profit organization located in downtown New Haven, CT. Since its founding by artists in 1987, Artspace has helped nearly 6,000 artists in the Greater New Haven area develop their careers by presenting gallery exhibitions, outdoor installations, a major annual Open Studios festival, and a teen education program every year. Artspace has been recognized for its artistic merit by the National Endowment for the Arts, the Surdna, Tremaine and Warhol Foundations. Artspace was recently selected as a finalist for an ARTPACE AMERICA Placemaking grant for its work with City-Wide Open Studios and the Alternative Space.
Impact
We expanded the professional support and commission-based income for artists creating new work. Over $25,000 in honoraria was re-granted to artists submitting outstanding proposals to transform the Goffe St Armory during City-Wide Open Studios ("CWOS"). Artspace provided professional support through our year-long residency program (an artist sets up a studio inside our gallery), Speed/Networking/Live! artist coaching event, and piloted a new audience development and education opportunity: curator-led tours on all the weekends during CWOS.
Artspace continued to build its partnership with the City of New Haven in showcasing the vacant Goffe Street Armory (150,000 square feet of space in the Dixwell neighborhood) for the temporary use of 150+ artists during the 18th annual CWOS festival, bringing to over 2 million square feet of space in transition that the program has showcased since its inception. This work also bridge-building with entities around the Armory's campus--Hillhouse HighSchool, DeGale Field, New Haven Correctional Center.
Our new Gallery Director/Curator has re-oriented the ongoing exhibitions to support ideas and practices fueled by radical imagination (for example with Vagaries of the Commons, an exhibition that asks who owns public space, or, Vertical Reach, a show that illuminated the new ways artists are generating political protest. Driven more by the transformative potential of unpredictability and risk, Artspace is increasingly a platform for thoughtful provocation, without shedding its commitment to provide support to artists to produce their work. We already see that the Curator has strengthened the quality of our programming and enlarged our network of artists.
Artspace hosted five major group exhibitions and several smaller experimental projects and displays of works on paper by area artists.
Artspace partnered with the Town Green Special Services District to participate in the Ninth Square First Fridays, the monthly open house night. By pooling resources, we attracted 4,000 people to the opening night of our Open Studios festival. People lingered at Artspace and wandered the surrounding blocks to experience artist-designed illuminations.
Worked with artist Titus Kaphar and local teens in New Haven Public Schools to present The Jerome Project, a portraiture project which puts the racial bias in our Criminal Justice system in stark relief. We organized a major conference at Yale Art Gallery that brought prison re-entry workers, artists, and local audiences together to discuss best avenues for policy reform.
2016 Goals:
Activate the Goffe Street Armory for CWOS in continued partnership with neighborhood residents, Hillhouse High School, and other groups.
Roll out our 30th anniversary with the help of a newly formed anniversary committee.
Reconnect with past exhibiting artists and organize a first reunion for them.
Transition our outmoded website to a more efficient and user-friendly word press site. Transition our outmoded mailing list and rolodex to the SalesForce donor management system.
Needs
Artspace seeks support to present outstanding and engaging exhibitions of art; to organize festivals and educational programs, and to operate a lively gallery space that is always free to the public. We seek program-specific sponsors to defray artist fees, and help cover rent, insurance and electric bills.
At the Armory, the City has numerous requirements of us to make the building safe and secure. We seek funds to defray the costs of clean-up, light mold remediation, the rental of life safety equipment, additional fire and police and event personnel, the rental of porta-sans (there is no water) and the costs of staff to conduct a vigorous neighborhood engagement campaign. $50K
We seek to support an estimated 100 low-income artists who wish to participate in CWOS for whom registration fees are a barrier. The Armory is immeasurably more exciting with their installations, made possible by fee bartering. $15K
Grant funding for 2 key staff positions will expire in the next 2 years. We seek ramp-up replacement funding to be able to retain these seasoned individuals. $90K
Our website is nearly 8 years old and frustrating to navigate. We are more than midway through an overhaul, but need to allocate staff and consultant time to move it to completion.
Board Chair Statement
Artspace is a small organization with a limited
budget, but with big aspirations and ambitious programming. City-Wide
Open Studios, which draws thousands of visitors over three weekends and is our
best-known event, is the largest of its kind on the East Coast. This
year, hundreds of local artists will have the opportunity to showcase their
work in private studios, Erector Square, and at the at the historic Goffe
Street Armory building, which is this year’s swing space. Several times a
year, our space on lower Orange Street hosts exhibits of both local and
national artists, and we are credited with helping the Ninth Square achieve its
current level of activity and vibrancy. We participate in First Friday,
rent our space out for events, and provide summer programs for young artists
and fellowships for recent college graduates. We just put on a sold-out
conference on issues involving incarceration, precipitated by a local artist,
who led our summer youth program. All in all, we are part of the fabric of the
community, lending credence to New Haven’s claim to being the Creative Capital
of Connecticut, and serving as a gathering place and resource for
artists. We do all of this with a tiny budget, and put every dollar to
use in our effort to bring art to everyone.
This past year has been one of great activity. In addition to ancillary events, such as the incarceration conference mentioned above, and studio dinners on various topics in our space, we have begun the groundwork laid out for us in our long range plan. We have started to celebrate our 30th anniversary, and have been working on curating our archives, in preparation for donating them for future use. We are in the early stages of an endowment campaign, ensuring that Artspace will remain strong into the future. Foundation giving to Artspace has always been strong, so we are concentrating now on developing our individual giving.