Americans for the Arts

Artworks created in the streets are by nature ephemeral and have the ability to capture raw and immediate individual and community responses; the meaning of these pieces is negotiated and shifts over time. The Urban Art Mapping research team, an interdisciplinary group of faculty and students based at the University of St. Thomas in Saint Paul, Minnesota, began working in early June to collect digital documentation of street art that emerged in the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder, ranging from monumental murals to small stickers and including commissioned art as well as unsanctioned pieces. We have seen that the art made in response to this act of injustice is an expression of the anger, frustration, and pain felt in communities across this country and around the world that needs to be preserved. Beyond serving as a repository for this art, the database was created as a resource for students, activists, scholars, and artists by way of metadata, including a description of key themes, geolocations, and dates of documentation. We are actively seeking contributions to the database through crowdsourcing in order to capture the global scale of this powerful call for change. 

Kathryn Armstrong is the Executive Director at the Columbus Area Arts Council in Columbus, Indiana where she has worked since 2016. The Columbus Area Arts Council’s mission is to strengthen the Columbus community through arts and culture. With 15 years of experience working as an art professional, Kathryn’s work is centered around making communities stronger through art, culture, and civic engagement. During her tenure, she has implemented artist-led workshops, pop-up performances, and the 411 Gallery in downtown Columbus. Previously a faculty member at the Herron School of Art and Design from 2010 until 2016, Kathryn taught professional practice courses for undergraduate and graduate students and served as the Director of the Basile Center for Art, Design and Public Life. “As an arts and cultural leader, I look for ways to enhance daily life through arts activation, supporting artists and arts organizations, inspiring others to be creative, empowering youth, and more importantly implementing ways for folks to have equal access to the arts.” 

“This toolkit was born out of a desire to fight despair,” shares Candida Gonzalez, artist and consultant to Forecast, a nonprofit for artists working in the public space. “I watched in disbelief as many friends all over the country lost their projects and gigs. Rather than pausing to think on alternatives, many funders’ knee-jerk response to the pandemic was to pull funding and cancel projects.” This despair birthed an idea from the team at Forecast for a toolkit created and launched in April 2020 with artists, arts organizations, presenting organizations, and others collaborating with artists in mind. “Innovation in the Time of COVID” is designed to be an ever-evolving platform that contains strategies for adapting in-person arts-based activities during the COVID-19 pandemic for everyone to share, use, and contribute to. Forecast continues to develop the toolkit based on open-source input from artists and arts organizations and examples of how they are adapting in-person arts-based projects. 

Katrina Daniels is the Exhibition and Gallery Sales Director at the Lansing Art Gallery and Education Center, which provides public awareness, education, and enjoyment of the visual arts by promoting the works of Michigan artists. Katrina coordinates exhibitions and public art programming working directly with artists to increase engagment between them and the Lansing community. Katrina is a co-founder of ARTpath, a program developed by the Gallery and the City of Lansing to bring artwork out of the traditional gallery setting and into the public realm. ARTpath offers more accessible opportunities for the community to engage with the work of Michigan artists. Our Member Profile series features the many Americans for the Arts members doing transformative work for arts education, public art, advocacy, arts marketing, and more. An Americans for the Arts Membership connects you with this network of more than 6,000 arts leaders and gives you access to latest professional development and research.

The decision to stand up and speak out on the injustices in our society does not always come as a choice for those who are subjected to them. In some cases, protest becomes a necessary means for which progress and justice may be made. The protests that followed the death of George Floyd in May 2020 took place all across the country, including Boston, where MASARY Studios is located. On May 31, a peaceful march in memory of George Floyd turned into a large rally on the Boston Common. The cultural tension between people of color and the local police force was felt in the air as the events unfolded throughout the night. Sparked by this event, the civil unrest became headline news and a prominent point of discussion. The start of our Protest Projections in Downtown Boston began the night after the rally at the Boston Common, emerging from the same cultural energy and tensions. As creatives we are motivated by our feelings of wanting to speak up, make a difference, and be a part of or start the conversation. Using our experience in public spaces as artists doing projections, we wanted to continue to use this medium to make an impact for change. Witnessing the nationwide protests, specifically the ones in our own city, the sense of creative urgency was even more present as we thought about our response as artists but also as protestors. Motivated by our drive to take action and the fact that so much is on the line for our future, it was not hard for us to decide whether or not we should take action.

Whenever you make public art, there are risks—usually financial. But today with monuments being challenged, politics, history, and community emotions are often also at play. Oh, and we are in a pandemic. When everything was halted in March, I fell into a depression. The prospect of making art with community, if we could do it safely, felt like a mental health salvation. Our Neighborhood Rolls became a beautification project to cover the cinder block wall at the side of a building, but primarily it was envisioned as a point of pride that, in the making, would build community-a meaningful, fun, educational, and engaging project for local kids and residents in Kingston, NY. At a time when everyone is evaluating what risks are worth taking for the greater good, maybe making art with people in public sounds like an unnecessary hazard. However, after my experience in Kingston, I would argue it was an essential action. It greatly impacted my mental health, and visibly demonstrated the importance of placemaking and tangible engagement for community in these apocalyptic times.