The American Express Emerging Leader Award is presented as part of Americans for the Arts’ Annual Convention and recognizes visionary leadership by an individual who is a new and/or young arts leader who demonstrates an ability to engage and impact their community. The 2021 honoree is Christine Her, Executive Director of ArtForce Iowa.

The Arts Education Award is presented as part of Americans for the Arts’ Annual Convention and recognizes transformational leadership in arts education through strategic planning, strong programming, and the engagement of partners to achieve community goals. The 2021 honoree is Jean Tokuda Irwin, Arts Education Program Manager for the Utah Division of Arts and Museums. 

The Selina Roberts Ottum Award is presented as part of Americans for the Arts’ Annual Convention and recognizes an individual working in arts management who has made a meaningful contribution to their local community and who exemplifies extraordinary leadership qualities. The 2021 honoree is Hoong Yee Lee Krakauer, Executive Director of the Queens Council on the Arts. 

The Alene Valkanas State Arts Advocacy Award is presented as part of Americans for the Arts’ Annual Convention and honors an individual at the state level whose arts advocacy efforts have dramatically affected the political landscape. The 2021 awardee is Julie Baker, Executive Director, Californians for the Arts and California Arts Advocates (Sacramento). 

The Michael Newton Award is presented as part of Americans for the Arts’ Annual Convention and recognizes an individual for their innovation in developing arts and business partnerships for the arts and/or long-term achievement in effective and creative techniques to engage the private sector. The 2021 honoree is Alma Robinson, Executive Director of California Lawyers for the Arts. 

Americans for the Arts will host its virtual Annual Convention June 8-11, 2021. Through 24 sessions, over 800 participants will gather to better understand how the nonprofit arts field can build an equitable arts, culture, and creative economy together as we reemerge and rebuild from the pandemic. The Annual Convention is an opportunity for the field to explore how to put creative workers and cultural organizations to work as part of a collective recovery.

This week: case studies and new learning especially for arts organizations, inspiration for artists looking to promote equity and collaborate with communities, a reversal on executive orders related to public art, and extended scholarships to attend the 2021 Annual Convention.

The arts and culture field continues to be affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. In response, Americans for the Arts expanded access to the Annual Convention through extended scholarship opportunities. Submit a request by Friday, June 4.

This week: we launched registration and opened scholarships to the 2021 Annual Convention, dove into arts policy and issues at the state and local levels, explored the importance of intersectionality in anti-racism work, reminded ourselves why creative employees make the best employees, and shined the spotlight on one of our dedicated members.

The theme of this week is the Annual Convention + Public Art & Civic Design Conference! More than 850 of you attended our first-ever virtual convening June 23-25, which featured 100 panelists speaking in 50 breakout sessions and four keynotes, plus presentations of our Annual Leadership Awards and the announcement of a brand-new public art prize.

Americans for the Arts has announced Red Door Project’s Evolve, a live performance experience based in Portland, Oregon, as the 2020 recipient of The Robert E. Gard Award. The award recognizes exemplary projects from the last year led by individuals or organizations who demonstrate a commitment to intersecting the arts with other sectors of community life in meaningful and measurable ways.

Rick Lowe is a Houston-based artist and professor of art at the University of Houston, best known for his Project Row Houses community-based art project that he started in Houston in 1993. President Barack Obama appointed Rick to the National Council on the Arts in 2013; in 2014 he was named a MacArthur Fellow. 

Christen Boone is the President & CEO of the Fund for the Arts in Louisville, Kentucky, one of the country’s largest privately funded regional arts agencies. She has developed thousands of unique partnerships between the creative and private sectors, driving workplace culture, client cultivation, project innovation, DEI initiatives, and social impact. 

Ann S. Graham brings a strong set of leadership skills to her work as the Executive Director of Texans for the Arts and she has demonstrated a deep passion for the arts and the role that they play in building and strengthening our communities. 

This week: As we pause today to celebrate and reflect on the history of Juneteenth, read the next entry in our ARTSblog series on the incredible musicians who were finalists for this year's Johnson Fellowship. We’re also looking forward to the first-ever virtual Annual Convention and Public Art & Civic Design conference, including the Nancy Hanks Lecture.