Module 1: Artists as First Responders and Community Builders

imageAbout this Module

Artists and entrepreneurs share a deep curiosity and a desire to put something into the world that has not yet existed, to fulfill humanity’s unmet needs. Yet, there are differences between the goals of the entrepreneur and the artist: the latter are also often visionary responders, forecasting what lies ahead and positing solutions to the challenges we face as a society.  This class will explore the range of opportunities for emerging artists to work with cultural and civic institutions, with an emphasis on building a practice that nurtures both the artist’s vision and community connection. We will discuss how museums and collectors acquire works of art, resources for learning about marketing, applying for grants and public competitions, and the importance of pursuing unconventional opportunities for artists’ work to solve real-world problems. If artists are entrepreneurs, then they should be prepared to initiate and create opportunities for themselves, and to bring others along,  while being simultaneously responsive to the issues of the day, and engage in building community, at a local level and beyond. As Carrie Mae Weems recently said, “What is the question I need to ask myself now….I always ask how my work can widen the path [for others]?”

Learning Objectives:

  • To learn about the wide range of art being collected and shown in museums, galleries, and other public venues today, and how those acquisitions, loans, and commissions happen.
  • To learn about resources for ongoing education and connection.
  • To learn about marketing their art in 2021, including the importance of crafting a consistently honest and articulate message, and the increasing importance of social media, why and how to participate, and what digital opportunities to treat with skepticism (NFTs!)

To complete this module, watch the video and submit the quiz.

Alice Gray Stites

Museum Director and Chief Curator

21c Museum Hotels

Alice Gray Stites is Museum Director and Chief Curator at 21c Museum Hotels. A multi-venue museum founded by collectors Laura Lee Brown and Steve Wilson, 21c is located in Louisville, Cincinnati, Bentonville, Durham, Lexington, Oklahoma City, Nashville, Kansas City, and Chicago. Stites curates exhibitions, site-specific installations, and a range of cultural programming at all 21c Museum Hotels, and oversees the curation, maintenance, and conservation of a 3,500- works collection of contemporary art, which includes painting, sculpture, photography, film, video, VR and AR. In addition, 21c actively loans to and from the collection to domestic and international institutions. Between 2012 and 2020, 21c has commissioned twenty-five site-specific, permanent installations by artists from the U.S., Europe, and Asia. 

21c also collaborates on arts initiatives with artists and other cultural and civic organizations worldwide. Under Stites’s leadership, 21c has engaged in collaborative exhibitions and programs with Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati, North Carolina Museum of Art, Speed Art Museum, Crocker Art Museum, Creative Capital Foundation, FotoFocus, Creative Time, ArtPrize, Pen & Brush, For Freedoms, EXPO Chicago, and others. Since opening in Louisville in 2006, 21c has presented over 100 exhibitions. Recently, Stites has curated Hybridity: The New Frontier; Aftermath: Witnessing War, Countenancing Compassion; Seeing Now; Wild Card: The Art of Michael Combs; Dis-semblance: Projecting and Perceiving Identity; Albano Alfonso: Self-Portrait As Light; Labor&Materials, Fallen Fruit: The Practices of Everyday Life; The Future is Female; Truth or Dare: A Reality Show; The SuperNatural; Refuge; Wim Botha: Still Life with Discontent; and This We Believe.

Prior to joining 21c as Chief Curator in 2011, Stites was director of artwithoutwalls, a non-profit, non-collecting public arts organization, curating exhibitions and installations in Louisville, Miami, and Stockholm. Stites began her career as an arts writer and editor in New York, at Art&Auction, ArtNews, Contemporanea, and Abbeville Press. From 1995-2006 was adjunct curator of contemporary art at the Speed Art Museum, where she curated The Theatre of Self-Invention; The Body in Pieces; Contemplating the Contemporary Still Life: Mary Ann Currier, A Retrospective; and other exhibitions; and she worked with the patrons’ group that supports acquisitions of contemporary art. Stites has lectured at universities and conferences such as Art Basel Conversations, Leaders in Software and Art, TEDx Stockholm, Moving Image Spotlight, PULSE Perspectives, the Kentucky Governor’s School for the Arts, NewInc at the New Museum, Creative Mornings, Skift Global Forum, and FotoFocus, and has served on juries including ArtPrize, FotoFocus, the Kentucky Triennial, PULSE Prize, Moving Image New York, and Creative Capital Foundation, where she served as lead juror, visual art, for the 2019 awards. In addition to numerous exhibition texts, Stites is the author of Ansel Adams, The National Park Service Photographs (Abbeville Press, 1994); Contemplating the Contemporary Still Life: Mary Ann Currier, A Retrospective (Speed Art Museum, 2005), and Wim Botha: Still Life with Discontent (North Carolina Museum of Art/21c, 2019). Stites graduated magna cum laude from the University of Virginia, and holds an M.A. from Columbia University. In 2019, Observer listed Stites on the Arts Power 50: The Changemakers Shaping the Art World. 

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