Performa Honored with Rockefeller Foundation Innovation Award
YOUNGEST ORGANIZATION EVER TO RECEIVE HIGHLY COMPETITIVE AWARD FROM FOUNDATION’S NYC CULTURAL INNOVATION FUND
Performa is proud to announce that it has been honored with a Rockefeller Foundation Innovation Award for its contributions to the cultural life of New York City. This award is given by the Rockefeller Foundation’s New York City Cultural Innovation Fund, which celebrates innovation and the creative sector through grants for trailblazing initiatives that strengthen the City’s cultural fabric. Presented in recognition of Performa’s outstanding achievements in the four years since its founding in 2004, and in support of the upcoming Performa 09 biennial (November 1-22, 2009, New York City), this honor makes Performa the youngest organization ever to receive a Rockefeller Foundation Innovation Award.
In selecting recipients of the Innovation Award, the Rockefeller Foundation looks for large-scale programs designed to advance the role of the arts in the future of the City, and this is indeed the centerpiece of Performa’s mission. “The Rockefeller Foundation’s New York City Cultural Innovation Fund recognizes the bold, visionary creativity of vibrant New York arts organizations. Each award, of up to $250,000, celebrates the diversity, imagination, and energy that make our city a global cultural leader,” said Darren Walker, Vice President for Foundation Initiatives. The unique structure of the Performa biennials—which bring more than 40 of New York’s leading arts and cultural institutions and 25 different curators together to present live work in all disciplines over the course of three weeks—transform the biennial format into something that links minds across the entire city, cross-pollinating diverse audiences among many different venues and turning the biennial into a tool for arts advocacy, since it can only exist as the sum of many parts.
“We use New York City’s incredible history of creativity as our inspiration,” said RoseLee Goldberg, founder and director of Performa. “The future of New York depends on the next generation and the next believing that this city is as edgy as it ever was. Everything we do is designed to make sure it stays that way.” Programming is created to appeal to diverse age groups and demographics across New York City, providing accessibility for the general public and opportunities for active participation in some of some of the most exciting and experimental work being created today, as well as a look back at seminal artists who came before. By at once highlighting the history of New York and propelling it into the future, Performa is a nurturing ground for young artists and a beacon for generations to come.
The Performa 09 biennial, which the Innovation Award will specifically support, will take the 100th anniversary of the publication of F.T. Marinetti’s “Futurist Manifesto” in 1909, which launched the most provocative and cross-disciplinary artistic movement of the twentieth century, as its point of departure. The biennial will look back to the radical propositions of the Futurists a century ago, and forward to a vision for the twenty-first century as imagined by today’s artists. Using the Futurist template of manifestos-for-the-future in all disciplines, Performa 09 will explore exciting new ideas in visual art, film, noise music, sound poetry, graphic design, dance, architecture and urbanism. The city of New York itself will be featured as an evolving ignition of ideas and of limitless dimensions, its architecture, walls, transportation and airwaves providing a platform for public engagement and inspiration.
The announcement of the Innovation Award turns an exciting new page in Performa’s history, as thus far, Performa has been made possible by a grassroots fundraising effort rather than civic support. Under the visionary leadership of Goldberg, Performa has raised funds for its programming primarily through the support of generous individuals, as well as by forming dynamic partnerships with some of the world’s leading arts institutions—including Sadler’s Wells, Documenta, and La Coleccion Jumex—to co-commission, produce, and tour new work. Out of a pool of 500 organizations that were invited to submit full applications, Performa is 1 of only 17 organizations that received awards from the New York City Cultural Innovation Fund this year.
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