Grants for Art in Public Spaces
Playing the Building: An Installation by David Byrne / photo: Sam Horine, 2008. Courtesy Creative Time, a GAPS recipient
The Grants for Art in Public Spaces (GAPS) program was designed to enable projects that take place in contexts outside conventional exhibition and performance spaces and engage the public in unusual ways. GAPS provided new opportunities for significant creative work to be presented in public spaces and supported new artistic and cultural experiences for the Downtown community.
Grants of up to $20,000 were awarded to artists and arts organizations working in any artistic discipline for projects sited within the myriad of public spaces in Lower Manhattan: parks and plazas, transportation terminals, historic sites, vacant storefronts, and privately owned public spaces. The program encouraged engagement with sites as a context, taking into account local communities, the built environment, or related political and social histories.
We paired our grants with information and resources for artists on what it takes to realize a public project, including fiscal sponsorship, panel discussions to share perspectives and approaches to public art, and online resources to inform artists about public art essentials: site research, insurance, permits and licenses, and community outreach.
Over three grant cycles, the program supported 44 artists and organizations through $484,000 in grants that enabled 50 public art projects Downtown.
For more information on the Downtown Cultural Grants Initiative, including grantees and program highlights, please read our report, Recovery and Growth in the Downtown Cultural Sector.
