NEW ORLEANS – The Contemporary Arts Center (CAC) has announced that it is the recipient of a $500,000 grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation for Interdisciplinary Curatorial Practice. The three-year grant supports the development of new work and interdisciplinary programming for visual and performing arts through 2023. Committed to presenting and producing multidisciplinary arts programming since 1976, the CAC is directing the Mellon funding towards Inter[SECTOR], a multidisciplinary program focused on cross-sector engagements among visual and performing artists and our community, specifically in areas of carceral justice, the environment, and healthcare.
The Inter[SECTOR] programming anchors the CAC’s Spring 2021 season with Gender (in)Justice, a series of conversations, workshops, and performances created and led by women and non-binary artist/ensembles focusing on injustices in the prison system and the impact of mass incarceration on these communities. National artists, community activists, and prison-impacted communities in New Orleans and Louisiana are collaborating on a diverse program of dance, music, and theater. Inter[SECTOR]’s developing three year program centers the role of artists as vital participants in fostering social justice through the creation and production of exceptional multidisciplinary art.
In year two of the Mellon grant, the CAC will support artistic work that focuses on health care and the role of the arts in addressing public health, healing, and recovery in partnership with healthcare advocates. In year three, the CAC will support artwork reflecting on the environment and climate change with artistic perspectives on the environmental impact and disparities across sectors with critical contributions by indigenous artists in Bulbancha (the indigenous name of the area now known as New Orleans.)
“The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation is doing phenomenal and transformational work across the nation, and we are proud to be a part. The CAC’s mission is to present the “art of our time,” which demands we recommit ourselves to a renewed institutional imagination and put the values of justice and equity into conversations and collaborations between artist, civic, and activist communities,” said George Scheer, executive director of the Contemporary Arts Center.
