Wexner Center receives $50,000 in funding from the National Endowment for the Arts and Ohio State. Credit: Lantern File Photo
The Wexner Center for the Arts received $50,000 in grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and Ohio State’s Global Arts and Humanities Discovery Theme, the Wexner Center announced Monday.
The center was awarded $15,000 from the NEA, an independent federal agency that funds and supports arts participation, to further their relations with artists in residency, and $35,000 from Ohio State’s GAHDT, a university initiative dedicated to cross-disciplinary collaboration in the arts and humanities, to support their internship program.
The NEA grant will help to expand the center’s existing relationship with Nigerian-American artist Jaamil Olawale Kosoko and Latinx performing artist Awilda Rodriguez Lora. Melissa Starker, spokesperson for the Wexner Center, said that both of these artists tackle relevant social issues of interest to students and the broader community.
“With the NEA grant, aside from supporting the development of new works that we’ll be able to share with audiences, we’ll also be documenting and sharing these works with the arts and academic communities at Ohio State and beyond,” Starker said.
Rodriguez Lora will continue her virtual residency, Starker said, and use the funds to continue her project “SUSENTO” — a transdisciplinary piece involving stories, movement and song that tackles Latinx identity, borders, gender issues, art-making and sustenance. Kosoko will continue to develop his project, which explores Blackness, feminism, queerness, ritual and spirituality.
“With Jaamil Olawale Kosoko, it’s been a multifaceted residency in which the artist has been free to work with numerous departments and curators at the Wex,” Starker said. “He’s been able to explore different media and to consider other ways he might engage with the center and the broader community.”
The NEA awarded $650,000 in federal funding to 29 Ohio arts organizations, and three Ohio poets received Creative Writing Fellowships of $25,000, according to a media release Thursday. This project-based funding supports “public engagement with, and access to, various forms of art across the nation, the creation of excellent art, learning in the arts at all stages of life, and the integration of the arts into the fabric of community life,” according to the NEA’s website.
Ohio State’s GAHDT awarded the center $35,000 to support their internship program. Starker said this funding will help create more opportunities for professional development for student interns.
“The intent is not only to provide a more meaningful experience, but to better prepare interns for the time when they’ll enter the post-school workforce,” Starker said. “With our focus on diversity, equity and inclusion in the hiring process — an extension of work we’re doing center-wide — we also hope to help address issues of underrepresentation in the creative sector.”
Wendy Hesford, the faculty lead for GAHDT, said its mission is to facilitate cross-disciplinary research that prioritizes the transformative power of the arts and humanities, innovative collaborations, student experiential learning and professionalization, and community partnerships.
“We see ourselves aligned with the Wexner Center’s commitment to arts innovation that enhances our capacity to foster cultural understanding, community healing and social change,” Starker said. “The arts and humanities provide insights into the human dimensions of global challenges and contribute to our understanding of enduring social needs and inequities.”
Hesford said GAHDT invests in undergraduate and graduate research, professional development, and career diversity in the arts and humanities that demonstrate the value of the arts and humanities to educate and prepare students to have the strategic and creative-thinking skills that modern-day employers are seeking.
Starker said the center’s mission aligns with Ohio State in that it is focused on education, research and community engagement.
“These grants will help us continue our collaboration with two groundbreaking artists to explore and develop new works and help strengthen our existing intern program to provide more learning and community-building opportunities for student interns,” Starker said.
