IAN DOUGLAS
The Foundation for Contemporary Arts, a storied enterprise founded by John Cage and Jasper Johns to assist artists with funding to make their work in full, has awarded 19 grants for 2018. The allotment of unrestricted $40,000 grants amounts to $760,000, the largest sum ever awarded through the Grants to Artists program integral to a foundation that dates back to 1963.
Three new grants for poetry were announced earlier this month, with awards going to Anne Boyer, Fred Moten, and Lisa Robertson. Other categories include Dance, Music/Sound, Performance Art/Theater, and Visual Arts. In addition, the biennial John Cage Award for “outstanding achievement in the arts” has gone to the 84-year-old Japanese composer Toshi Ichiyanagi.
In a statement, Glenn Ligon, an artist and also a director of the FCA, said, “This year, FCA is making the largest number of $40,000 awards in the organization’s 55-year history. The partnership of individuals and foundations in celebrating the legacy of artists associated with FCA over the years has increased the number of artists that FCA can support each year, continuing FCA’s unique ‘artists for artists’ approach.”
The full list of grantees follows, each of them for $40,000 and certain of them supported in the memory of artists who have been associated with the FCA in the past.
Dance
Ligia Lewis, Berlin, Germany
Yvonne Meier, New York, NY (The Dorothea Tanning Award)
Mariana Valencia, Brooklyn, NY
Netta Yerushalmy, New York, NY
Music/Sound
Joshua Abrams, Chicago, IL
Sylvie Courvoisier, Brooklyn, NY
Bonnie Jones, Baltimore, MD
Catherine Lamb, Berlin, Germany
Laurie Spiegel, New York, NY
Performance Art/Theater
Los Angeles Poverty Department, Los Angeles, CA (The Robert Rauschenberg Award)
Poetry
Anne Boyer, Kansas City, MO (The Cy Twombly Award for Poetry)
Fred Moten, New York, NY (The Roy Lichtenstein Award)
Lisa Robertson, Nalliers, France (The C. D. Wright Award for Poetry)
Visual Arts
EJ Hill, Los Angeles, CA
Simone Leigh, New York, NY
Sam Lewitt, Brooklyn, NY
Dave McKenzie, Brooklyn, NY
Carissa Rodriguez, New York, NY
John Cage Award
Toshi Ichiyanagi, Tokyo, Japan