Warhol Grant Supports University Art Museum Programing

While the University Art Museum is open only by appointment this semester, behind the scenes planning continues for full programming in the future that supports the arts, artists and the University.

Over the summer, the museum received a grant for $100,000 over two years from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts to support exhibitions, public programs and publications.

The highly coveted Andy Warhol Foundation grants focus on serving the needs of artists by funding the institutions that support them. In this grant cycle, 47 arts organizations nationwide received a total of $4 million in support of scholarly exhibitions, publications and visual arts programming, including artist residencies and new commissions.

“The University Art Museum in Albany is an important venue for contemporary art upstate,” said Rachel Bers, program director of the Warhol Foundation. “Its exhibitions and public programs explore timely aspects of contemporary culture, and its focus on amplifying the voices of lesser known artists and practices aligns well with the Warhol Foundation's core values.”

The Warhol Foundation funding will help the University Art Museum expand its mission of directly supporting artists in the research, production and presentation of projects that reflect the diverse perspectives and experiences of UAlbany students.

“It couldn’t mean more to the museum, amidst so much uncertainty in the cultural sector across the country, that the Warhol Foundation looked at our program and decided to fund us,” said Museum Director and Chief Curator Corinna Ripps Schaming. “With the Foundation’s support and validation of our efforts, we can confidently move forward in originating future exhibitions and directly supporting new work by both young and established artists.”

The next exhibition, planned for the Fall 2021 semester, is Well/Being: An Exhibition on Healing and Repair. It will explore topics of kinship, reparations, disability justice, chronic illness, convalescence, sleep deprivation, the emotional costs of caregiving and various incarnations of love.

Well/Being was originally scheduled for this fall, but the COVID-19 pandemic pushed museum programming plans back a year. The Warhol Foundation approved the change “based on our track record,” Schaming said, and the funding begins now to aid in planning for this exhibition as well as other exhibitions and programming.

“This exhibition sends a clear signal that student well-being is integral to the fabric of campus life at UAlbany and that it is a shared responsibility. By integrating efforts across the disciplines, the University Art Museum is uniquely positioned to provide opportunities for students to engage more fully in their academic experience and to explore new forms of connection, community, resilience, and action,” Schaming said.

Spring 2021 programming is still in its planning stages, Schaming said.

This is the second Warhol Foundation grant that the University Art Museum has received; in December 2008, the Museum was awarded a $60,000 grant over two years to support exhibitions and related publications. William Hedberg, senior vice provost for Academic Affairs, said getting a second grant is a “wonderful reaffirmation” of the museum’s quality and its impact on University life.

“The museum is an important asset of UAlbany’s academic program. Under Corinna’s leadership the museum team has developed strong collaborations with University faculty and with a regional network of arts-presenting organizations at other academic institutions,” Hedberg said. “Together they have conceived and offered intellectually stimulating and timely exhibitions with complementary speaker presentations, workshops and special events, which together enrich and support the curriculum and contribute substantially and significantly to the University’s strategic goals.”

About the Foundation

In accordance with Andy Warhol’s will, the mission of The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts is the advancement of the visual arts. The foundation manages an innovative and flexible grants program while also preserving Warhol’s legacy through creative and responsible licensing policies and extensive scholarly research for ongoing catalogue raisonné projects. To date, the foundation has given over $218 million in cash grants to more than 1,000 arts organizations in 49 states and abroad and has donated 52,786 works of art to 322 institutions worldwide.