Past
Grantees

KRISTEN MCDOUGALL, graphic designer, teacher and chair of the design division at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, will travel for 15 days in Havana, Cuba, researching the post-revolutionary poster design of Umberto Pea and Raul Martines. McDougall intends to expand her awareness of another cultures style and design aesthetic to inform her personal and classroom work.

The MEDIA ALLIANCE, New York City, received $23,000 to subsidize radio/sound art fellowships. The mission of this organization is to support, promote and advocate for independent film, video, audio, radio and digital arts in the State of New York. Individual artists may apply to the fellowship program if they are working in sound and/or radio as independent art forms. Support is provided for single channel sound and radio projects, multichannel pieces, Internet projects and installation works. This fellowship program was initiated in 1999. Jerome funding for a second year allows the organization to build upon the applicant base.

MEET THE COMPOSER, New York City, received a grant of $23,000, of which $15,000 will support New York City emerging composers and $8,000 Minnesota emerging composers. Meet The Composer fosters the creation, performance and recording of music by American composers, while also developing new audiences for their work. The objective is to bring men and women who write music into personal contact with their audiences. Jerome support pays composers' fees.

A grant of $6,300 was authorized for the Minnesota Council on Foundations.

The MINNESOTA DANCE THEATRE, Minneapolis, Minnesota, received a two-year grant of $45,000 to support four emerging choreographers who are developing new pieces for the company. The mission of Minnesota Dance Theatre is to create masterful and provocative dance performances which entertain and inspire audiences. Under the direction of Lise Houlton, the Minnesota Dance Theatre's repertoire includes classical pieces, contemporary ballet and modern works. Part of Jerome Foundation subsidy will go toward choreographer in residence Cynthia Gutierrez-Garner. Other choreographers included in the grant are Robert Hill, a principal dancer with American Ballet Theater; Cathy Young and Matt Jenson, independent choreographers based in the Twin Cities; and Lise Houlton.

The MINNESOTA FILM BOARD, Minneapolis, Minnesota, is a nonprofit state film commission funded as a public/private partnership. It promotes the State of Minnesota as a prime location for filmmaking, provides a wide variety of services to independent producers and develops support for them. Now four years old, the Minnesota Independent Film Fund provides seed money to talented filmmakers who are developing independent feature film projects. The Film Board received $25,000 from the Jerome Foundation for a Screenwriters' Mentorship Program, a one-year pilot that matches nationally recognized screenwriters with three Minnesota Independent Film Fund award-winning projects. The mentor is expected to maintain regular contact with the Minnesota-based screenwriter, read and provide notes on drafts of the script and travel to Minnesota for one-on-one consultations.

The FREDERICK R. WEISMAN ART MUSEUM of the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota, received a three-year grant of $48,000 in continued support of the Public Art Commissions Program. This Museum recently celebrated its five-year anniversary in its new facility, where it has housed more than 46 exhibitions, 500 lectures, classes and performances and more than 3,000 guided tours. A previous three-year grant from the Foundation allowed the Museum to pilot a competitively selected, Minnesota artist-created public art commissions project. An open call for submissions will yield artists proposals, which are reviewed by an independent selection committee. The Weisman staff then assists three selected artists in identifying collaborators within the University and in other communities with which they want to work. Artists receive honoraria, funds for materials and retain ownership of their works. The Museum retains the right to exhibit the work for two years. The Museum mounts small concurrent exhibitions in the galleries for the three artists, and sponsors public presentations by them.

The MIXED BLOOD THEATRE COMPANY, Minneapolis, Minnesota, received a two-year grant of $35,000 in support of projects by emerging playwrights. The majority of the funds will be spent on the development and production of new plays by Minnesota and/or New York City writers in the 1999-2000 and 2000-2001 seasons. Mixed Blood is a professional, multiracial theater dedicated to encouraging cultural pluralism, individual equality and artistic excellence. In addition to its mainstage shows, the Theater maintains an extensive touring program, a playwrights' competition, a script submission process, and a mission-driven entrepreneurial wing titled EnterTRaining.

The Jerome Foundation Directors authorized a grant of $10,000 to S.A.S.E.: THE WRITE PLACE, Minneapolis, Minnesota, acting as fiscal agent for MIZNA, in support of artists' fees and production costs for three upcoming issues of this literary journal.  Mizna was incorporated in early 1998 to organize and promote Arab-American literature.  The first two issues contained poems, essays, stories and art by Arab-Americans.  Many of the writers were local, and a number had not been published before.  Jerome funding will enable the organization to pay reasonable fees to artists and subsidize some production costs.

ZORAN MOJSILOV, sculptor, received a grant to spend six weeks in Belgrade engaged in an artist residency in the countryside and an exhibition in Zemun at Umetnicka Galerija Stara Kapetanija.

The Jerome Foundation made its first grant to choreographer DEAN MOSS in 1998. A second proposal, submitted through the fiscal sponsorship of the NEW YORK FOUNDATION FOR THE ARTS, New York City, requested funding for the creation and performance of a new work titled American Deluxe. Funding of $16,000 over two years was authorized. Moss blends dance, text, music, electronic and other visual media to create intricate performance and video works. In American Deluxe, he will focus on the assimilation of multiple philosophies that define culture in an ever-widening experience of the world; and the effect of that assimilation on transgressive, violent and transcendent elements in American social behavior. Moss intends to establish a dialogue between a world sustained through the sacrifice of blood and a world defined as the functioning of a mind.

THEATER MU, Minneapolis, Minnesota, received a grant of $40,000 to support new works by emerging artists over the next two seasons. Theater Mu is a professional Asian-American theater company committed to giving voice to Asian-Americans. Through the transformational power of theatrical works, it aspires to redefine Asian-American culture and community. Activities planned for the current season include Song of the Pipa, written and directed by Rick Shiomi and featuring pipa virtuoso Gao Hong. Daughters of the Philippines will be an evening of one-act plays, by Sandra Agustin and Lia Rivamonte. The eighth New Eyes Festival of staged readings and workshop performances will be co-presented with The Playwrights' Center in February of 2000.

ILZE KLAVINA MUELLER, a writer and translator, will spend four weeks traveling in Germany and Latvia, retracing her childhood and collecting material for her memoir A Normal Refugee Childhood.

The Jerome Foundation made a three-year grant of $25,000 to the MUSEUM OF MODERN ART's Department of Film and Video, New York City, to support the acquisition of works by emerging artists who have been supported by the Jerome Foundation's New York City and Minnesota Media Arts Programs. This is the second such grant made to the Museum's Film and Video Department, which serves a national and international film and video constituency. It makes its archives and exhibitions available to the general public, as well as to a large community of film and video scholars, students and professionals. Nearly 650 feature length films and 300 short films are presented annually. The collection is comprised of more than 14,000 titles and spans the history of cinema from the 1890s to the present. Jerome funding gives a boost to emerging film and video artists who benefit significantly from having their work acquired by the Museum of Modern Art.

The Directors awarded a two-year grant of $24,000 to Music at the Anthology, New York City, in support of emerging composers commissions in the Young Composers Commissioning Program in 1999-2000 and 2000-2001. Music at the Anthology has as its goals to commission and premiere works by unaffiliated composers and thereby encourage their entry into a musical community and American musical life; to curate these works in a meaningful context along with recent and older music; and to create a new community of artists and audiences in the East Village at Anthology Film Archives. Special attention is paid to cross-disciplinary work and to composers from Minnesota and New York City.

A grant was awarded to filmmaker KELLY NATHE to travel for six weeks in Sarajevo and Eastern Bosnia to develop her documentary filmmaking skills under the guidance of photojournalist James Rexroad, through a program of the International Film and Television Workshop, Portland, Maine.

NEW DRAMATISTS, New York City, founded in 1949, gives member writers the tools they needtime, generous theater space, a pool of talented and experienced actors and directors, writing equipment, meeting space and a gifted peer communityto grow artistically and strengthen their commitment to theater. A nationally competitive selection process brings five to seven new writers to the organization each year to join a current membership of 39 playwrights. A portion of the Jerome Foundation grant of $25,000 is designated for the Composer-Librettist Studio, a learning laboratory that fosters collaboration among playwrights and composers. The goal is a greater understanding of the collaborative process of music-theater creation, and the seeding of potential partnerships that may evolve to enrich the art form. Jerome funding was also authorized for emerging playwright development activities, from commissions through readings, workshops and professional counsel.

First-time grant recipient NEW GEORGES THEATER COMPANY, New York City, received $10,000 in support of the development of new theatrical works by emerging playwrights in 1999. New Georges was founded eight years ago by women actors confronting the scarcity of substantive roles for women. The Room, a multi-use workspace, houses readings, small-scale workshop presentations, rehearsals and artists gatherings. The organization cultivates a diverse, growing network of affiliated artists. The organization looks for works that employ the full creative power of theatervigorous use of language, strong images, and a sense that anything can happento tell compelling stories.

THE NEW GROUP, New York City, received $15,000 to support the mainstage production of Cranes by Dimitri Lipkin and literary programs in the 1999-2000 season. The New Group aims to present provocative new plays confronting contemporary issues. The Literary Department handles a variety of functions and scouting responsibilities for the theater. The Playwrights Unit is a writers' collective that meets weekly. There is a new play reading series. This season, The New Group is launching a workshop series to investigate works-in-progress in a closed rehearsal setting. This provides a steppingstone for scripts already at an advanced stage but not quite ready for production.

A grant of $32,000, over two years, was awarded to NEW RADIO AND PERFORMING ARTS, New York City, in support of emerging artists commissions within the Turbulence project. New Radio and Performing Arts was founded in 1981 to stimulate and advance the publics awareness of innovative work in the arts by producing experimental work for radio and live performance. Now entering its fourth year, Turbulence commissions emerging and established artists to develop new works that explore the specific characteristics of the World Wide Web and make use of multimedia and on-line technologies. Turbulence artists represent a variety of disciplines, and work from a variety of cultural and aesthetic backgrounds. This is more than a commissioning and distribution project. Turbulence artists meet regularly and contribute to the overall development of the site, sharing knowledge and assisting one another in the development of individual projects.