ADAA FOUNDATION ANNOUNCES CURATORIAL AWARD RECEIPIENTS

For Immediate Release

ADAA FOUNDATION ANNOUNCES CURATORIAL AWARD RECIPIENTS

New York, February 20, 2014--The Art Dealers Association of America Foundation (ADAA Foundation) and the Association of Art Museum Curators Foundation (AAMC Foundation) announced today the 2013 ADAA Foundation Curatorial Award recipients. The ADAA Foundation Curatorial Awards were established in 2012, with the first awards given in 2013, to support yearly fellowships for a curator in a pre-World War II field and a curator in a post-World War II field.

The 2013 awardees are Jane Dini, curator of the upcoming exhibitionArt of American Dance at the Detroit Institute of Arts, and Pamela McClusky, curator of the upcoming exhibitionDisguise: Masks and Global African Art at the Seattle Art Museum. Each will receive $10,000 each in fellowship grant money to be applied toward research and development expenses associated with each exhibition.

The awards are intended to help museums advance deserving projects by providing critical funding for research and development.Working in collaboration with the Association of Art Museum Curators, the ADAA and AAMC Foundations joined forces to form awards juries to narrow down the initial application pool of over forty proposals to the two finalists. The AAMC Foundation will administer the grants on behalf of the ADAA.

"The research and development phase is critical to an exhibition’s success, but is so seldom given the external funding it requires,” says Judith Pineiro, Executive Director of the AAMC, "The ADAA Foundation is to be applauded for addressing the need for support of this crucial exhibition development stage, and the AAMC is proud to be working with the ADAA Foundation to publicly recognize this need.”

"Supporting curators while they are in the nascent stages of developing an exhibition is of great interest to the ADAA Foundation,” says Dorsey Waxter, President of the ADAA, "We are delighted to have been able to provide this support and look forward to future collaborations between curators and dealers.”

About Art of American Dance at the Detroit Institute of Arts

The Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA) is planningThe Art of American Dance, the first major traveling exhibition to explore visual art inspired by dance from 1820-1960. Organized by Assistant Curator of America Art Dr. Jane Dini, the exhibition will open in Detroit, Michigan, in March 2016 before touring to the Denver Art Museum and Crystal Bridges. A fully illustrated catalogue will accompany the exhibition, advancing scholarship and providing a foundation for future study. Essays for the catalogue will be written by art and dance historians, producing a collaborative study between the fine and performing arts. Paintings, sculptures, photographs, and costumes brought together for the first time will demonstrate the central place of dance in America’s artistic imagination. Artists did not merely represent dance, they were inspired by dance to think about how Americans move through space, present themselves to each other, and experience time. And for some artists, the way they put paint on canvas, carve a sculpture or frame a photograph, is imbued with the rhythms of the body in motion. Dance provides a language for artists and a means for thinking through an aesthetic, static representation.

About Disguise: Masks and Global African Art, at the Seattle Art Museum

Disguise: Masks and Global African Artis being organized by the Seattle Art Museum, and curated by Pam McClusky, Curator for the Art of Africa and Oceania, for viewing in Seattle from June 18, 2015- September 7, 2015. The exhibition will be accompanied by a catalogue published with Yale University Press and is expected to tour nationally to select venues during 2015 and 2016. Disguise is a common visual act that has renewed vitality in the 21^st century. This exhibition will review the profile of historic masks and masquerades on the continent of Africa, then consider how masking is expanding among African artists in an increasingly digital world. Artists are now able to address mass audiences and suggest ways to go under cover in media, photography and interactive platforms. Veiled faces, invented personalities, questioning sounds, and entire alternative lives may conceal or reveal hidden thoughts. Rather than a survey, ten artists will present their work in depth and many are being commissioned to produce original installations that exemplify what disguises can do.

About The ADAA

The Art Dealers Association of America (ADAA) is a non-profit membership organization of the nation's leading galleries in the fine arts. Founded in 1962, ADAA seeks to promote the highest standards of connoisseurship, scholarship and ethical practice within the profession. ADAA members deal primarily in paintings, sculpture, prints, drawings and photographs from the Renaissance to the present day. For more information, please visit www.artdearlers.org.

About the AAMC

The mission of the Association of Art Museum Curators (AAMC) is to support and promote the work of museum curators by creating opportunities for networking, collaboration, professional development, and advancement. 

In support of these aims, the AAMC Foundation seeks to heighten public understanding of the curator's role in art museums through professional development programs, awards, and grants.
For more information, please visit www.artcurators.org.

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