Two weeks after the mass shooting at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, artists nationwide are using their craft to address the killings, honor the victims, and call for systematic change. Art forms ranging from murals, paintings, and spoken word to public installations and dance performances are helping Charleston— and the rest of America—unite in the wake of the June 17^th massacre. 

The Salina, Kansas Community Art & Design (CAD) program was developed in 2000. Brad Anderson, Executive Director of the Salina Arts & Humnanities local arts agency that manages the program, discusses the importance of public art and how the program has impacted the community in this article which also details the included projects and some of the controversies that have been encountered along the way.

Anderson states "if I instructed our office to only follow the direction of the negative voices in the community, we wouldn’t have any art."

Grant deadline alert!  Did you know that funds are available for arts projects in and about the National Park System?  

July 23 is the deadline for “Imagine Your Parks,” a funding collaboration of the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Park Service to support projects that use the arts to engage people with memorable places and landscapes of the National Park System. This NEA/NPS collaboration celebrates the NEA’s 50th anniversary in 2015 and the National Park Service’s centennial in 2016.  

Google contiues to photograph street art and murals around the world in high-resoultion images. Various organzations have have teamed up with Google to collect images of the emperial artworks and in some instances created online tours for users who can't travel to the location to view and learn about the artwork.

Artist Random Act states that “Street art is trying to elevate itself to a higher art form, and Google is allowing us to do so.” Google is preserving street art even while it is having trouble  documenting musuem artworks due to copyright issues.

Land art artist Michael Heizer has been developing "City" in the Garden Valley, Neveda since the early 1970's. Today, the land around the artwork is under threat of development. Though the land that the artwork sits on is owned by the artist, there is a movement starting to protect the land around it.

Americans for the Arts, the nation’s leading nonprofit organization for advancing the arts and arts education, honors 31 outstanding public arts projects created in 2014 through the Public Art Network (PAN) Year in Review program, the only national program that specifically recognizes the most compelling public art. The works were chosen from more than 300 entries across the country and recognized today at the 2015 Annual Convention in Chicago. 

This year, Americans for the Arts is honoring the Association for Public Art (aPA) with the Public Art Network Award. Given annually since 2003, the award honors innovative contributions to, and exemplary commitment and leadership in, public art.

The New York City Council has passed a bill which will give the public more say in the city’s Percent for Art program. Since 1982, the Percent for Art program has allocated one percent of the budget for all city-funded construction projects for public art.

Americans for the Arts has announced the New Community Visions Initiative, part of the large-scale Transforming America’s Communities Through the Arts, a $10.5 million suite of programs set to generate national dialogue and engage key stakeholders over the next three years. The New Community Visions Initiative will explore the future of local arts in America and the role of community-based arts that enable organizations, funders, cultural institutions, and artists to shape healthier communities over time. 

The original artists of Berlin’s famed Kreuzberg murals have decided to remove their work by painting over the two pieces with black paint. Conceived several years ago by a small team of artists, the murals were painted by Italian street artist BLU and French artist JR. The first murals depicted two figures showing East and West Berlin gang signs attempting to unmask each other, and the other showed a man shackled by gold watches on his wrists.

Today, Bloomberg Philanthropies announced 12 finalist cities in the running to receive up to $1 million each as part of the Public Art Challenge, a new program aimed at supporting temporary public art projects that engage communities, enhance creativity, and enrich the vibrancy of cities. Americans for the Arts president and CEO Robert L. Lynch applauds Bloomberg Philanthropies and comments on the news. 

KRIS Wine and Americans for the Arts are proud to announce that Pete Beeman, creator of the Hampline Exploration Stations in Memphis, Tennessee, is the grand prize winner of the KRIS Wine “Art of Giving” contest.

The Americans for the Arts 2015 Public Art Network (PAN) Year in Review is open for submissions. The annual PAN Year in Review recognizes exemplary, innovative and creative public art projects completed in the previous calendar year, 2014. Up to 50 projects will be selected and presented at the Americans for the Arts Public Art & Placemaking Preconference happening June 10-12, 2015 in Chicago, Illinois.

Two of the foremost banjoists in the world, Béla Fleck and Abigail Washburn, have announced plans to donate profits from merchandise sales at an upcoming concert to the Confluence Project in Eau Clair, WI. The show will take place at the State Theatre in Eau Clair on February 27. 

The winter meeting of the United States Urban Arts Federation (USUAF) took place in New Orleans, LA on January 21-23, 2015 at the InterContinental New Orleans. The USUAF was updated on Americans for the Arts current programs and initiatives for 2015, and many conversations were had over the weekend around central themes of arts and diversity, creative equity, placemaking, and more.