Warhol Foundation Gives $100,000 To TBA

Portland’s Time Based Art festival has snagged a 2-year, $100,000 grant from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the 2010 and 2011 festivals. The Warhol Foundation, which focuses on supporting contemporary art that is experimental, under-recognized, or challenging in nature, says the TBA festival has secured a prominent place in the public imagination:

“…Perhaps most impressive of all, however, is the way TBA manages to activate public, non-art spaces that bring the city into the Festival and the Festival into the city. This past year, the Festival’s late-night programming and ON SIGHT visual arts installations were both staged in the re-purposed Washington High School, and Australia’s Back to Back Theater performed its riveting Small Metal Objects to an audience wearing headphones in the middle of a bustling outdoor lunch crowd in Pioneer Square. By presenting work in diverse neighborhoods and alternative spaces, PICA is able to engage broad, new audiences in contemporary art.”

True dat.

“We’re all very excited,” says Patrick Leonard, communications director for PICA, who says the Warhol Foundation sent out a number of their grant makers to see the festival last year.

“They told us how excited they were about our artists intersecting live versions of their work alongside gallery space,” says Leonard, quoting examples of work like that of New York-based dance duo robbinshilds or video artist Kalup Linzy at the festival as representative of the kind of work that had impressed the grant makers.

• photo by CaroleZoom courtesy of PICA
• NY-based dance duo of Sonya Robbins and Layla Childs perform inside Washington High School on Day 5 of TBA 2009

Linzy’s video work deals with black and queer identity in the south, but he also performed a series of r&b live performances for characters he had created, alongside local musician Ben Darwish. You may remember Linzy’s face from ads on the side of TriMet buses during the festival.

The TBA budget in 2009 was roughly $750,000. So the $50,000 grant repeated over two years will be hugely transformative, says Leonard.

“The money will be applied to the festival generally, but definitely on these kinds of projects where visual artists are expanding their boundaries,” he says.

Way to go, guys.