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 reach beyond the typical arts audience, engage the public in unusual ways, and take place in contexts outside conventional exhibition and performance spaces. 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 creative projects sited within myriad public spaces of Lower Manhattan: parks and plazas, transportation terminals, historic sites, vacant storefronts and privately owned public spaces. The program encouraged projects that engage sites as a context, taking into account specific 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 project outside of the gallery or the theater, including panel discussions to share perspectives and approaches to public art, and online resources to inform artists about public art essentials: siting,insurance, permits and licenses, and community outreach. In the final year of the program, we offered fiscal sponsorship to enable our individual grantees to increase their fundraising potential.
Over three grant cycles, the program supported 44 artists and organizations through $484,000 in grants that enabled 50 public art projects.
Grantees
- American Tap Dance Foundation
- Matthew Bakkom
- Alina and Jeff Bliumis
- British Memorial Garden
- Chinese Theatre Works
- Circus Amok
- CITYarts
- Collage Dance Theatre
- Creative Time
- Dancing in the Streets
- Tai Dang
- Electronic Music Foundation
- Ethel
- Solange Fabião
- Frère Independent
- Elaine Gan
- Matthew Geller
- Erik S. Guzman
- Pablo Helguera
- Hester Street Collaborative
- Eunjung Hwang
- Yoko Inoue
- Stephan Koplowitz
- Pia Lindman
- Looking Glass Productions/Alice Farley Dance Theater
- Norm Magnusson
- Zach Morris and Tom Pearson
- neurotransmitter
- New York Classical Theatre
- Palissimo
- Poets House
- The Public Theater
- The River Project
- Rooftop Films
- Roulette Intermedium
- Eric Schuldenfrei and Marisa Yiu
- SENS Production
- Bill Shannon
- Stephanie Skaff
- Spiegelworld
- Anna Stein and Athena Robles
- Tryst
- Two Bridges Neighborhood Council
- Alex Villar
- Seth Weiner
