Art Basel’s crowd-funding campaign is in full swing! Art Basel, founded in 1970, “stages the world’s premier Modern and contemporary art shows, held annually in Basel, Miami Beach, and Hong Kong.” This year, in addition to gathering the global art elite – Basel is bringing exciting and underfunded art-nonprofits into the public eye by promoting campaigns via their Kickstarter page.
Which organizations make the Kickstarter cut? With non-profits selected by criterion such as “overall quality, innovation and creativity,” the process is up for interpretation. The panel is, however, attempting to fulfill the more explicit goal of selecting “applications [that] represent the diversity of cultures and viewpoints in the international art-world.” Three judges decide who makes the initial cut, but from there it’s up to online patrons to decide which programs ultimately reach their goal, and which get vetoed.
While all the Non-Profits included are worth your spare funds, here are a few highlights from the campaign:
The Artists’ Cooperative Residency and Exhibitions, hosts a summer residency for 80 artists located Wisconsin. The work they create is then exhibited in Chicago throughout the year. ACRE is hoping to fund a new art space in Chicago by repurposing a funeral home built in 1933. If you’d like to help breathe life into this project (yuck yuck yuck) click HERE! The new space will (theoretically) house “a gallery space, a multi use flex space, a library, and an office”
Touts director Alexandra Pace and supports “experiments in radical arts practices.” Blitz prides itself on being the only independent contemporary artist-run space in Malta, and will use funds to create a project space designed by local architects, in which their “10 weeks 10 shows” project will take place. Check out their video to see the design for an artist residency space, which literally folds out of the wall. Click HERE to show your support!
The Museum of Contemporary Art of Detroit, will fund Andrew Kuo to create a large scale mural in Detroit’s Midtown Corridor. This project will be called Living Canvas, and, as Elysia Borowy-Reeder says, is part of MOCAD’s nearly decade long life span that mainly “runs on creative energy.”
The Swiss Institute is a free of charge contemporary gallery space located in Soho, New York. The Swiss Institute was founded in a living room by Swiss expats in 1986, and today acts as a bridge between European and American Artists. Money will go to digitizing archives in order to ensure that their work lives on, on the Internet. Click HERE to show your support!
The Land Foundation
Located in Northern Thailand, is an agricultural retreat and space for artists in which residents will live and sustain themselves off the land. The goal of the project is “to promote discussion of art and agriculture,” said project head Chiang Mai. Click HERE to show your support!
Who do you think is most worthy of a grant? Many projects have a mere week left to reach their goals, some with less than half their target reached. You can learn more about and support more non-profit art groups at Art Basel’s official Kickstarter campaign page.
