Established 2005 Staff 18 Website www.pcah.us | Executive Director Paula Marincola Location Philadelphia, PA | |
Address 1608 Walnut Street, 18th Floor
Philadelphia, PA 19103 | ||
The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage is a nonprofit grantmaking organization and knowledge-sharing hub for arts and culture in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, established in 2005. The Center receives funding from The Pew Charitable Trusts and makes project grants in two areas, Performance and Exhibitions & Public Interpretation, as well as awarding grants to individual artists through Pew Fellowships. The Center also makes Advancement grants, substantial awards to high-performing organizations seeking to make lasting improvements to their programming, audience engagement, and financial health. Its current mission is to "support artists and organizations whose work is distinguished by excellence, imagination, and courage." In 2008, Paula Marincola was named the first executive director.
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History and timeline
In 2005, The Pew Charitable Trusts brought seven programs—in dance, visual arts and exhibitions, heritage, cultural management, music, theater, and individual artist fellowships—together under one roof, as The Philadelphia Center for Arts & Heritage. The Center received its current name in 2008. These programs have since merged to form a single entity that awards grants throughout Greater Philadelphia. In 2013 the Center merged its Project Grant programs to create two new funding categories: Performance and Exhibitions & Public Interpretation. Since 1989, the Center has awarded over $108 million to artists and arts organizations in the Southeastern Pennsylvania region, which includes Bucks, Chester, Delaware, Montgomery, and Philadelphia counties. Each year, the Center also makes Advancement Grants.
The historical timeline for the Pew Center for Arts & Heritage is as follows:
Recently funded projects
In 2015 the Center awarded 49 grants totaling more than $9.6 million, ranging from $60,000 to $500,000. Examples of recently funded projects include:
Project grants for events, exhibitions and performances
A performance of Igor Stravinsky’s The Firebird at the Mann Center for the Performing Arts; a residency for Boris Charmatz hosted by Drexel University’s Antoinette Westphal College of Media Arts and Design, to present Levée des Conflits; and a series of mobile sculptures by artist Cai Guo-Qiang presented by the Association for Public Art.
World-premiere commissions and performances, such as Opera Philadelphia’s chamber opera Breaking the Waves by Missy Mazzoli; the Nat King Cole Project at People’s Light; and Pablo Batista’s El Viaje (The Journey);
Historical interpretation projects including the exploration of two kitchens at Cliveden of the National Trust for Historical Preservation; and Arch Street Meeting House Preservation Trust’s re-examination of Quaker history surrounding the Arch Street Meeting House;
Programs that engage local communities, such as Hank Willis Thomas: Philadelphia Block Project at Philadelphia Photo Arts Center; and the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts’ Holding It Down: The Veterans’ Dreams Project from Vijay Iyer.
Pew Fellowships
Pew Fellowships is a funding program of The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage, established by the Pew Charitable Trusts in 1991, which offers direct support to individual Philadelphia-area artists across disciplines, annually awarding up to 12 unrestricted grants of $75,000. The Pew Fellowships provide artists with an economic freedom that presents the opportunity to focus on their individual practices over a considerable period of time—to explore, to experiment, and to develop their work. The program aims to elevate the quality and raise the profile of individual artistic work in Philadelphia's five-county region, to create a strong community of Pew Fellows, and to help them achieve their artistic and career goals by connecting them to additional resources in the field.
Pew Fellowships are by nomination only, and selections are made through a two-tier peer review process. Applications are first reviewed by discipline-specific panels, which select finalists to be reviewed by a final interdisciplinary panel. Panelists are artists and arts and culture professionals from outside of the Philadelphia area; chosen for their expertise, they serve for one year. See a full history of Pew Fellowships recipients.
Advancement grants
Advancement grants are awarded to high-performing cultural organizations in the five-county Philadelphia region, and are intended to support organizations seeking to make lasting improvements to their programming, audience engagement, and financial health.
In December 2013, the Center awarded its first Advancement grant to Opera Philadelphia, for a multi-year project that helped the organization undertake audience research to further enhance the impact of its programs, as well as bring opera to a variety of audiences in unconventional places and unexpected ways.
In 2014, the Center awarded an Advancement grant to the Philadelphia Zoo, for the next phase of its innovative trail system, which will add to an ever-changing and enriching experience for animals and audiences alike. (2014)
In 2015, the Center awarded Advancement grants to the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society (PCMS), Curtis Institute of Music, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art (PMA).
In 2016, the Center awarded an Advancement grant to The Franklin Institute.
As hub for knowledge-sharing
Beyond its work as a cultural grantmaker in Philadelphia, the Center has established itself as a hub for knowledge-sharing beyond the region, working in the areas of artistic expression and cultural interpretation. To engage in an international arts dialogue, the Center develops and hosts a range of activities, which concern artistic production, interpretation, and presentation. Activities include lectures, symposia, and workshops, and commissioned scholarship to explore critical issues in the fields served by the Center. The Center's website houses a series of online essays and interviews, along with information about Center-funded events and grantees.
A multidisciplinary group of cultural practitioners, scholars, and consultants from around the world have contributed to the Center's ongoing knowledge-sharing activities, including Jérôme Bel, Romeo Castellucci, Tacita Dean, Anna Deavere Smith, Thelma Golden, Anna Halprin, Barkley L. Hendricks, Bill T. Jones, Miranda July, Tony Kushner, Claudia La Rocco, Ralph Lemon, Paul Schimmel, and many more.
Director, playwright, and actor Ain Gordon served as the Center's inaugural Visiting Artist from 2011–13.
Kristy Edmunds, Executive and Artistic Director, Center for the Art of Performance at the University of California, Los Angeles, served as the Center’s first Visiting Scholar.
Publications and research
Center publications include Pigeons on the Grass Alas: Contemporary Curators Talk About the Field and Letting Go? Sharing Historical Authority in a User-Generated World, print anthologies edited by Center staff; and What Makes a Great Exhibition?, an essay anthology that examines various components of exhibition-making, edited by Paula Marincola. The Center's danceworkbook series offers web-based publications that explore the choreographic process. In February 2015, the Center launched the fourth iteration of the series, A Steady Pulse: Restaging Lucinda Childs, 1963–78. The multimedia web publication is a reexamination of the early dances of one of America's most influential contemporary choreographers, Lucinda Childs. It features Childs' extensive archives, scores, photos, videos, newly released essays, and a series of restagings performed in Philadelphia. In January 2017, the Center produced In Terms of Performance in collaboration with the Arts Research Center at the University of California, Berkeley. The online keywords anthology features essays and interviews from more than 50 prominent artists, curators, presenters, and scholars who reflect on common yet contested terms in interdisciplinary cultural practice.