National Endowment for the Arts Announces Funding for Projects including $25,000 to Asia Society
NEW YORK, June 26, 2017 — Asia Society is pleased to be among the recipients of local arts project funding, approved by National Endowment for the Arts Chairman Jane Chu, in the NEA’s second major funding announcement for fiscal year 2017. An Art Works award of $25,000 will support the Asia Society Museum exhibition After Darkness: Southeast Asian Art in the Wake of History—on view to the public September 8, 2017, through January 21, 2018—as well as the accompanying catalogue and related educational programs.
The exhibition will feature works by seven contemporary artists and one artist group from Indonesia, Myanmar, and Vietnam, and will highlight the work of the artists as a response to sociopolitical events in their home countries. In addition to sculptures, video, mixed-media installations, and photography, the exhibition will feature 70 historic works made by Vietnamese artist-soldiers who were on the front lines of the American-Vietnam War.
“The arts reflect the vision, energy, and talent of America’s artists and arts organizations,” said NEA Chairman Jane Chu. “The National Endowment for the Arts is proud to support organizations such as Asia Society, in serving their communities by providing excellent and accessible arts experiences.”
“Asia Society greatly appreciates the NEA’s support of this project,” said Boon Hui Tan, Asia Society Vice President of Global Arts & Cultural Programs and Director of Asia Society Museum. “The exhibition, catalogue, and related educational programs aim to increase appreciation of the ways in which conflict, political and economic transition, and other defining historical moments in Southeast Asia such as the Vietnam War, for instance, influenced the practice of contemporary art and shaped the region’s relationships with the United States over the last forty years.”
For more information on projects included in the NEA grant announcement, visit Arts.gov.
Asia Society Museum presents a wide range of traditional, modern, and contemporary exhibitions of Asian and Asian American art, taking new approaches to familiar masterpieces and introducing under-recognized arts and artists. Through exhibitions and public programs, Asia Society provides a forum for the issues and viewpoints reflected in both traditional and contemporary Asian art, and in Asia today. Founded in 1956 by John D. Rockefeller 3rd, Asia Society is a nonprofit, nonpartisan, educational institution headquartered in New York with state-of-the-art cultural centers and gallery spaces in Hong Kong and Houston, and offices in Los Angeles, Manila, Mumbai, San Francisco, Seoul, Shanghai, Sydney, Washington, D.C., and Zurich. Find out more at AsiaSociety.org.