Pew Center for Arts & Heritage

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.[2] 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 $143 million to artists and arts organizations in the Southeastern Pennsylvania region, which includes Bucks, Chester, Delaware, Montgomery, and Philadelphia counties.[3][4]

The historical timeline for The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage is as follows:

• 1989: Philadelphia Music Project
• 1991: Pew Fellowships in the Arts
• 1993: Dance Advance
• 1995: Philadelphia Theatre Initiative
• 1997: Philadelphia Exhibitions Initiative
• 1998: Heritage Philadelphia Program
• 2001: Philadelphia Cultural Management Initiative
• 2005: Programs brought together as The Philadelphia Center for Arts & Heritage
• 2008: Center renamed The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage
• 2013: Center moves from seven to three funding areas: Performance, Exhibitions & Public Interpretation, and Pew Fellowships[5]

In 2019, the Center awarded 39 grants totaling more than $8.4 million, ranging from $60,000 to $400,000, plus additional funding for operating costs of up to 20 percent of the grant.[6] Examples of recently funded projects include:[7][8]

• Numerous world premieres and commissions, including a play at People’s Light by Obie Award-winning playwright Eisa Davis that considers the immigrant experience through stories of a suburban Philadelphia farming community; an opera by composer Missy Mazzoli and librettist Royce Vavrek, co-produced by Opera Philadelphia and Norwegian National Opera, that explores themes of community, ritual, belonging, and belief; and an immersive installation of filmed performances from artists Mary Reid Kelley and Patrick Kelley at The Fabric Workshop and Museum that contemplates the impact of environmental change.
• Performances and installations that use technology to blend live and virtual experiences, such as a new performance work by pioneering postmodern choreographer David Gordon, presented by Christ Church Preservation Trust, that links dancers in two cities through video streams; The Philadelphia Orchestra’s presentation of Ludwig van Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis, which immerses audiences in a virtual, multidenominational cathedral designed by artist Refik Anadol; and a participatory movement and storytelling event from Nichole Canuso Dance Company that connects audience members with one another through digital technology.
• Projects that illuminate lesser-known histories and cultural traditions, including a new documentary film that surveys the history of North Philadelphia’s black community from the turn of the 20th century through the 1960s, written and directed by Scribe Video Center’s Louis Massiah; Fund for the Water Works’ exhibition examining the history and present-day implications of segregated swimming pools in America; and WXPN’s series of radio programs and concerts that spotlight Haiti’s cultural traditions and their influence on New Orleans’ music.
• Activations of new creative spaces, such as an exhibition of works by ceramists Molly Hatch, Ibrahim Said, and Kukuli Velarde to inaugurate The Clay Studio’s new building in Philadelphia’s Kensington neighborhood; and Bucks County Historical Society’s effort to enhance understanding of its collection of pre-industrial American material culture through the redesign of two currently unused rooms in Doylestown’s century-old Mercer Museum.

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,[14] along with information about Center-funded events and grantees.[3]

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,[15] Romeo Castellucci,[16] Tacita Dean,[17] Anna Deavere Smith,[18] Thelma Golden,[19] Anna Halprin,[20] Barkley L. Hendricks,[20] Bill T. Jones,[21] Miranda July,[22] Tony Kushner,[23] Claudia La Rocco,[24] Ralph Lemon,[25] Paul Schimmel,[26] David Lang (composer),[27] Boris Charmatz,[28] Ann Hamilton (artist),[29] and many more.[30]

Director, playwright, and actor Ain Gordon served as the Center's inaugural Visiting Artist from 2011–13, returning for an additional term in 2018–2019.[31]

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.[32] Dr. Suse Anderson, Museum Studies professor at George Washington University, current president at Museum Computer Network, and host of the Best of the Web Awards-winning podcast Museopunks, served as the Center's first Visiting Technologist in 2018-19.

Center publications include Pigeons on the Grass Alas: Contemporary Curators Talk About the Field,[33] The Sentient Archive: Bodies, Performance, and Memory,[34] and What Makes a Great Exhibition?, an essay anthology that examines various components of exhibition-making, edited by Paula Marincola.[35]

In 2011, the Center published Letting Go? Sharing Historical Authority in a User-Generated World,[36] an anthology of thought pieces and case studies related to shared historical authority in museums and public humanities projects. The anthology explores subfields such as oral history and digital humanities to interrogate the changing nature of expertise in the museum field, and considers co-curation as a method for encouraging public engagement.

The Center's danceworkbook series offers web-based publications that explore the choreographic process.[37] In February 2015, the Center launched the fourth iteration of the series, A Steady Pulse: Restaging Lucinda Childs, 1963–78.[38][39] 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 [40] 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.[41]

In 2019, the Center published Site Read,[42] an anthology in which "seven exhibition makers lay out the motivations, conditions, logistics, and consequences of shows they organized that now stand as icons of structural innovation in terms of site," published by Mousse Publishing.

[43]

• Pew Fellowships in the Arts
• The Pew Charitable Trusts
• Paula Marincola

• The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage
• Full List of Pew Fellows, PCAH Website
• "Cash is king. But it's not everything!" Grantmakers in the Arts website