Wexner Center for the Arts receives grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and Ohio State’s Global Arts + Humanities Discovery Theme

The Wexner Center for the Arts at The Ohio State University is among the recipients of grants in the most recent funding cycles of the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) and Ohio State’s Global Arts + Humanities Discovery Theme (GAHDT). The grants will support two key elements of the center’s mission and values: sponsoring the development of new projects by artists and illuminating the educational potential of this work.

The NEA has awarded a grant of $15,000 to expand the center’s existing relationship with Brooklyn-based Nigerian-American artist Jaamil Olawale Kosoko and Latinx performing artist Awilda Rodríguez Lora. 

Kosoko, recipient of a 2020–21 Wexner Center Artist Residency Award, will continue to develop the suite of materials around his most recent performance piece, Chameleon: A Biomythography, which was co-commissioned by the center. This multifaceted project explores Blackness, feminism, and queerness as well as ritual and spirituality. 

Rodríguez Lora, a past visiting artist who collaborated with the Wex on a virtual residency in September 2020 from her home and creative queer commune La Rosario in San Juan, Puerto Rico, will continue to build on her project SUSTENTO with the help of these funds. This transdisciplinary piece combining stories, movement, and song tackles Latinx identity, borders, gender issues, art-making, and sustenance. 

Both performance-based works will be shared with Wex audiences on future dates, as either on-site events or live-virtual hybrids (depending on federal, state, and university COVID-19 guidelines). The Wex will also document these performances for wider distribution.

Ohio State’s Global Arts + Humanities Discovery Theme, which facilitates cross-disciplinary collaboration in the arts and humanities, will support the center’s internship program with a $35,000 grant. 

Student workers and advocates are foundational to the Wex, connecting the center directly to the university population while creating opportunities for staff to learn as well as to share knowledge. As many as 150 undergrads, recent graduates, and gap year students from Ohio State and other schools apply each year for one of up to a dozen internships in focus areas such as advancement, marketing, and school and family engagement. The program fosters diversity, equity, and inclusion through the application process and within opportunities provided over the course of the internships.

Funds will help enhance the experience of these emerging arts professionals through new opportunities to connect meaningfully with paid and volunteer Wex staff, as well as through grants for interns to pursue research projects or other professional development. This funding will primarily support the Wex’s commitment to ensure that interns are compensated for the work they contribute.

“We’re so grateful to these organizations for the recognition of our efforts,” says Johanna Burton, Executive Director of the Wex. “Our relationships with artists such as Jaamil and Awilda, as well as with  each and every one of our interns, reflect a center-wide commitment to embracing and elevating a diverse range of voices and perspectives, in both our public-facing work and the work we’re doing internally.”