Wexner Center for the Arts receives $100,000 in funding to address effects of racism through the arts

The Wexner Center for the Arts has secured $100,000 in project support through a $50,000 grant from The Ohio State University Seed Fund for Racial Justice and a 1:1 matching funds opportunity provided by Ohio State’s Global Arts + Humanities Discovery Theme. The grant was one of 10 awarded by the Seed Fund and it is the largest amount the fund bestows. 

This funding will deepen the center’s existing partnerships and programs for schools and teachers, which are led by the Wex’s Learning & Public Practice department. It will also support new educational initiatives that reflect a sharpened institutional focus on addressing racial inequality.

“As the country as a whole comes to acknowledge the profound depth and breadth of systemic racism, all of us at the Wex are intensely engaged in thinking about the responsibility of cultural institutions to play an active role in creating a more just society,” Wexner Center Executive Director Johanna Burton says. “These grants recognize the value of the arts to foster empathy and understanding; and honor the trust our Department of Learning & Public Practice has developed with Ohio schools over years of collaboration. We’re thrilled by the opportunity to build on this team’s meaningful work and to center anti-racism within our organization.”

Part of the funding supports WorldView a program that brings together high school students from multiple school districts across Ohio to develop cultural literacy and hone critical thinking skills through the exploration of contemporary art. It’s been reenvisioned and expanded this year, and centers issues of racial and social justice. 

The grant will also be used to develop new programming, such as a series of equity and anti-racism workshops for educators to address barriers in K–12, and the creation of a multi-year fellowship at the Wex that will support this range of efforts. 

Programming with students and educators uses multiple strategies including empathy and mindfulness as a foundation for anti-racism work, in conjunction with arts-based training in diversity, equity, accessibility, and inclusion (DEAI). Findings and research will be shared broadly with professionals in the museum and education fields.

A team of consultants and partners from the university and across central Ohio include Big Walnut High School principal Andy Jados and Ohio State Associate Professor Joni Boyd Acuff. Additional collaborators are also being convened to provide implementation assistance with these expanded initiatives. 

“DEAI are long-standing commitments in teaching and engagement at the Wex,” notes Dionne Custer Edwards, the Wex’s Director of Learning & Public Practice. “However, these grants make important new DEAI work possible—calling on those of us who inhabit institutions to ask harder questions, disrupt systemic disparities, and develop and expand initiatives and programming that is pointed and explicit in prioritizing equity.”

The Seed Fund was developed at Ohio State at the request of the Office of the President through a collaboration of leaders from the offices of Research, Diversity and Inclusion, Outreach and Engagement and Academic Affairs, and the colleges of Education and Human Ecology and Social Work. The complete list of Seed Fund grantees is available here.

Updates on the work supported by the Seed Fund grant will be shared over the course of the year-long funding cycle on wexarts.org.