Two Major U.S. Foundations Are Giving $5 Million to Latinx Artists, Who Have Long Lacked Dedicated Support

The Ford Foundation and Andrew W. Mellon Foundation will give 75 artists $50,000 each

By Caroline Goldstein, for Art Net

Two of the largest philanthropic organizations in the U.S.—the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the Ford Foundation—are working to address inequities facing Latinx artists with a new fellowship program.

The foundations have donated $5 million to the Latinx Artist Fellowship, which for the next five years will annually give 15 individual artists $50,000 each in unrestricted funds.

The program, which is open to artists of Latin American or Caribbean descent born or living in the U.S., has named an intergenerational cohort of emerging, mid-career, and established artists as the inaugural 15 fellows, including Celia Álvarez Muñoz, Carolina Caycedo, Adriana Corral, Coco Fusco, Yolanda López, Miguel Luciano, Guadalupe Maravilla, Carlos Martiel, and Juan Sánchez.

The initiative is part of the U.S. Latinx Art Forum (USLAF), an organization founded in 2015.

“USLAF is honored to collaborate with Ford and Mellon to continue our work of uplifting Latinx visual artists,” Adriana Zavala, director of the U.S. Latinx Art Forum, said in a statement, “especially since their long historical contributions to the American experience have been largely ignored and made invisible within the art world and academic ecosystems.”

For more information, see: https://news.artnet.com/art-world/latinx-fellowship-1988077

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