Past
Grantees

The Jerome Foundation made a two-year commitment of $4,000 to the FOUNDATION CENTER, New York City, in general support of its programming and services. The Foundation Centers mission is to strengthen the social sector by advancing knowledge about philanthropy in the United States and around the world. The Center is committed to providing grantmakers, advisors, investors, nonprofits, and others with data-driven tools, research, and analysis that help them maximize the allocation of their resources. Each year, approximately 200,000 individuals, including thousands of nonprofit representatives, use the Centers searchable database to find funding partners or prospective foundation supporters that can help advance their work. At the core of much of the Centers work over the past 50 years lies an effort to build the capacity of the nations nonprofits to better navigate the funding environment.

FOUR WAY BOOKS, New York City, received $15,000 in support of the publication of two volumes by emerging New York City authors and their tours to promote the books.  Four Way Books is an independent literary press publishing both poetry and fiction.  It seeks to please and expand the literary audience and to nurture the gifts of talented adult writers, representing a wide range of geographic, cultural, and economic backgrounds. 

"SARAH FOX, writer, Minneapolis, Minnesota, will travel to London, England, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and Chicago, Illinois, to research historical medical documents and artifacts at the Royal Society of Medicine and the Worshipful Society of Apothecaries in London, conduct interviews with relevant doctors, family members, and DES daughters, and attempt to uncover related medical records.  This study will inform a book-length documentary text combining poetry, memoir, primary documents, images, scientific/medical texts, media reports, and dramatic dialog collected from interviews with DES Daughters. DES refers to Diethylstilbestrol, a nonsteroidal estrogen.  "

FRANKLIN FURNACE, Brooklyn, New York, received a two-year grant of $80,000 in support of the Franklin Furnace Fund.  The mission of Franklin Furnace is to present, preserve, interpret, proselytize, and advocate on behalf of avant-garde art, especially forms that may be vulnerable due to institutional neglect, their ephemeral nature, or politically unpopular content.  It serves artists by providing both physical and virtual venues for the presentation of time-based visual art, installation art, performance art, and variable media art.  The Franklin Furnace Fund awards grants to emerging artists, allowing them to produce major works in New York.  A panel of artists reviews proposals and selects recipients.  Grants range between $2,000 and $10,000.  Jerome funding supports artists who live in the five boroughs of New York City.  

"CULLY GALLAGHER, documentary filmmaker, Minneapolis, Minnesota, will travel to Nairobi and the western provinces of Kenya to prepare for production of his first feature-length documentary.  Gallagher will learn from community development organizations and the people they serve.  He hopes to deepen his language skills, reestablish existing personal relationships, and conduct preliminary interviews with people for a film that explores issues of urban migration as they relate to the coming of age stories of young Kenyans. "

THE GIVENS FOUNDATION FOR AFRICAN AMERICAN LITERATURE, Minneapolis, Minnesota, received a two-year grant of $44,000 in support of the Givens Black Writers Collaborative Retreat Program.  The Givens Foundation is dedicated to the enrichment of cultural understanding and learning through programs that advance and celebrate African American literature and writers.  The annual Black Writers Collaborative Retreat Program launches with a four-day retreat for ten emerging African American writers and focuses on providing mentoring and peer support for the writing life, the honing of literary craft, the production of new works, and professional development for participating writers.  Two established writers serve as mentors during the Retreat.  Afterward, participants continue to gather at workshops to craft their works and receive feedback from one mentor and their peers.  At the conclusion of the program year, participants showcase their works.

GRANTMAKERS IN THE ARTS, Seattle, Washington, received a $2,500 grant to support the pilot stage of a benchmark study on giving to individual artists. The mission of Grantmakers in the Arts (GIA) is to provide leadership and service to advance the use of philanthropic resources on behalf of arts and culture. As a national association of private and public funders making grants to artists and arts organization, its strength is in its diversity of members: private, family, community, and corporate foundations; national, state, and local governmental agencies; and nonprofit national, regional, and local service organizations. Among its various activities, Grantmakers in the Arts conducts focused research on topics of significant interest in the field.

GRANTMAKERS IN THE ARTS, Seattle, Washington, received a two-year commitment of $22,000 in general support of its programming. Grantmakers in the Arts (GIA) is a national association of private and public funders that make grants to artists and arts organizations. Its mission is to provide leadership and service to advance the use of philanthropic resources on behalf of arts and culture. It supports arts grantmakers in their work by providing ongoing opportunities to learn, connect, and communicate with each other. GIA holds an annual conference, publishes the GIA Reader, provides services and information through it website and web conferences, and works across sectors to enhance philanthropy practice and cultural policy.

HARVESTWORKS, New York City, received $17,000 in support of the creation, development, and production of new works created by emerging digital media artists in the Creative Residencies Program.  The mission of Harvestworks is to support the creation and presentation of experimental artworks achieved through the use of new and evolving technologies.  Its goals are to create an environment where artists make work inspired and achieved by electronic media; bring together innovative practitioners from all branches of the arts collaborating in the use of electronic media; create a responsive public context for the appreciation of new work by presenting finished work; and advance the art community’s and the public’s agenda for the use of technology in art.  The Creative Residencies Program commissions artists and supports them through the production process.  Artists are given stipends, access to first-rate equipment, and expert artist/engineers to help them produce their work.

IN THE HEART OF THE BEAST PUPPET AND MASK THEATRE, Minneapolis, Minnesota, received $18,000 in support of PuppetLab, a laboratory for the development of emerging puppet and mask theatre works.  Drawing inspiration from the world’s traditions of puppet and mask theatre and its lively roots in transformative ritual and street theatre, In the Heart of the Beast creates vital, poetic theatre for all ages and backgrounds.  PuppetLab is an intensive seven-month workshop process engaging four emerging artists or artist teams in extending their artistic vision.  It culminates in performances of the artists’ new puppet-based work.  Artists are selected from an open call and panel review process.

ZACHARY HEINZERLING received support for Cutie and the Boxer, a feature-length documentary meditation on companionship, sacrifice and the creative spirit. This love story explores the chaotic 40-year marriage of two New York-based Japanese artists, Ushio and Noriko Shinohara. Bound by years of quiet resentment, disappointments, and missed professional opportunities, they are locked in a hard, dependent love. Through candid scenes between the couple, the viewer comes to understand that the stark differences in the Shinoharas art and personalities are the basis for a deep and challenging symbiosis that has kept them together for 40 years. The film is a challenging and moving portrait of a couple wrestling with the eternal themes of sacrifice, unrealized ambitions, and aging, against the background of lives dedicated to art.

HERE ARTS CENTER, New York City, received a two-year grant of $40,000 in support of the participation of emerging artists in the HERE Artist Residency Program (HARP). HERE builds a community that nurtures career artists as they create innovative hybrid live performances in theatre, dance, music, puppetry, media, and visual art. HARP provides multi-year commissioning, development, and production support to a group of 15 to 17 emerging to mid-career New York City-based artists working in a variety of disciplines. Through HARP, artists develop the necessary skills to steer their artistic careers, and develop and produce ambitious new works.

HIGHPOINT CENTER FOR PRINTMAKING, Minneapolis, Minnesota, received a two-year grant of $40,000 in support of the Jerome Emerging Printmakers Residency Program. Dedicated to advancing the art of printmaking, Highpoints goals are to provide educational programs, access, and collaborative publishing opportunities to engage a diverse community of users, and to increase public understanding of and appreciation for the printmaking arts. Emerging printmakers receive nine months of access to a fully-equipped printshop, technical support from a residency coordinator, storage space, materials, a discount on classes and events, group discussions and critiques, a group show and public opening, digital documentation of work, and stipends.

DEVIN HORAN was awarded support for RekonGrodek, an experimental film consisting of a prologue and a triptych of sequences structured around themes of trance, derangement, apocalypse, love, and suicide; a maelstrom of imagery about the compounded forces acting on the Austrian poet Georg Trakl. An accelerated, warped, and spectral world, fusing archival documentary footage with broken narrative fragments filmed in digital video. Overlaid by a voice-over bordering on incoherence, Trakl's disordered life and violent death are filtered into an iconographic vortex, re-arranging the consituents of his being in schizoid patterns, and creating a raw canvas of brutality, horror, and disintegration. Like Trakl's poetry itself, RekonGrodek should be seen as "one long uninterrupted visionary image, encompassing complex fusions of dream-like visions and the memory of real events and experiences propelled by an ever-deepening morbid anxiety, wherein existential concerns are sieved through a series of images onto our minds via hallucinatory scenes and settings, rather than through mere telling."  (Will Stone)

DEVIN HORAN, filmmaker, Brooklyn, New York, will travel to France, Belgium, Germany, Poland, Czech Republic, Austria, and Hungary to conduct preliminary research, location scouting, production planning, and writing for a feature film based on the life of Austrian poet Georg Trakl. Entitled Grodek, Horan’s film will take the premises of Georg Traki’s life, poetry, and suicide as an apocalyptic vision of a mind and a civilization in a state of disintegration.  

KATHY HUANG, documentary filmmaker, Brooklyn, New York, will travel to Guangzhou, China, to experience firsthand the thriving community of African traders and lay the groundwork for a documentary that takes a fresh look at China through the eyes of these new immigrants.  Since 2003, the population of Africans in China has grown at a dizzying rate: 30 to 40% annually.  Huang will spend her time in Guangzhou observing life in African churches, markets, salons and restaurants, and also talking to local Chinese who interact regularly with Africans.  This trip will provide Huang a rich orientation to the landscape of African immigrants in China.

INTERMEDIA ARTS, Minneapolis, Minnesota, received $52,500 in support of two literary programs, Beyond the Pure Fellowships for Writers and VERVE Grants for Spoken Word Poets. A multidisciplinary, multicultural arts center, Intermedia Arts is a catalyst that builds understanding among people through art. The fellowship program, which awards grants of up to $4,000 to emerging writers, aims to increase the visibility of and provide a platform for emerging writers whose voices have historically been under-represented in the literary arts. This program provides community, mentorship, guidance, workshops, and resources to the artists selected. VERVE Grants support emerging spoken word poets who are interested in artistic advancement and leadership in their communities. Through financial assistance, professional encouragement, and recognition within a culturally and socio-economically diverse group of literary artists, this program strengthens and supports Minnesotas literary community. VERVE artists participate in a cohort program that provides community, mentorship, guidance, workshops, and resources.

The INTERNATIONAL CONTEMPORARY ENSEMBLE (ICE), Brooklyn, New York, received $12,000 to support the commissioning of new works by emerging New York City-based composers in ICElab Collaborations.  ICE is dedicated to reshaping the way music is heard and experienced.  It functions as performer, presenter, and educator, advancing the music of this time.  It emphasizes interdisciplinary collaborations, commissions of new work, and performances in non-traditional venues.  ICElab places teams of ICE musicians in close collaboration with composers to develop evening-length works that push the limits of musical exploration.  Jerome support is directed toward the participation of two emerging New York City-based composers in ICElab. 

ISSUE PROJECT ROOM, Brooklyn, New York, received $16,000 in support of the participation of emerging artists in the Artist-in-Residence Program.  ISSUE Project Room is a pioneering performance center, presenting projects by emerging and established experimental artists that expand the boundaries of artistic practice and stimulate critical dialogue about art and culture in the broader community.  It commissions and premieres more than 20 new works each year and presents a diverse array of artists working across the disciplines of music, sound, dance, performance, literature, video, and film.  The Artist-in-Residence Program provides emerging artists with year-long residencies, rehearsal space, production support, curatorial services, and marketing support to create new work, reach the next stage in their artistic development, and gain exposure to a broad public audience.  Jerome funding supports commissions for emerging artists in this program.

SANGAMITHRA IYER, writer, Brooklyn, New York, will travel to London, United Kingdom and Yangon/Mandalay, Burma (Myanmar), to research historical documents of Burma in the 1930s and witness current conditions to inform a creative nonfiction book project, Divining Water, which blends memoir, family history, and reportage.  Iyer’s project looks at the parallels between her work as a writer and engineer with her paternal grandfather, a civil engineer and water diviner who was active in the Freedom Movement in India.