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The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage

About

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Welcome to The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage. Established in 2005 and located in Philadelphia, PA, the Center is dedicated to stimulating and supporting a vibrant cultural community in the five-county Southeastern Pennsylvania area. The Center is a thriving nexus for the exchange of ideas in the fields of arts and heritage and makes grants in seven areas—dance,  visual art exhibitions, heritage, cultural management, music, theater, and individual fellowships—supporting area artists and organizations whose work is distinguished by excellence, imagination, and courage. Take a look through our website and keep current on our extensive programming and an exciting roster of past grantees and grantee projects.

Beyond its work as a unique and exemplary grantmaker in the arts, the Center is also a vibrant hub for the discussion, stimulation, and exchange of ideas around artistic expression and cultural interpretation. As this dialogue is always evolving, the Center encourages participation in that exchange through a lively host of activities and resources concerning artistic expression, cultural interpretation, and audience engagement that aim to build programmatic and management capacity among our constituents. The highlights of these professional development events, including trips, symposia, lectures, reading groups, master classes, and workshops, are readily available on forums such as the Center blog, along with other pertinent news and information from those fields. “Like” us on Facebook to engage in conversations regarding the future of arts and culture and other issues regularly discussed at the Center, many of which arise through our professional development events. Follow us on Twitter for up-to-date news and updates, and visit our regularly updated Calendar for an ongoing, dynamic schedule of performances, exhibitions, and events made possible by the Center's grants.

The Center commissions research on issues vital to the fields we serve and support. Examples of recent publications include Letting Go? Sharing Historical Authority in a User-Generated World, a print anthology edited by Heritage Philadelphia Program staff; Philadelphia Exhibitions Initiative's essay anthology, What Makes a Great Exhibition?, which examines various components of exhibition-making;  and danceworkbook, Dance Advance's series of web-based and DVD-Rom publications that explore the choreographic process.

This year, the Center has embarked upon a number of new endeavors that recognize the importance of audience engagement, support the visionary leaders in our region, and ensure that Philadelphia is connected to national and international dialogues about cultural practice. We’re in the midst of the pilot year of our Visiting Artist Program, an annual residency project that seeks to create a model for an imaginative and compelling relationship between a grant-making organization and an artist, through creative discourse and an ongoing exchange of ideas. The 2011–12 visiting artist is three-time OBIE Award-winning writer, director, and actor Ain Gordon. In addition, the Center recently launched a new cross-disciplinary, multi-author project called Shelf Life, where artists, curators, and designers—many of whom are Center grantees—are invited to use the contents of the Center’s Exhibitions library for curated displays on subjects of their choosing.  As noted earlier, the Center also recognizes the importance of audience engagement and ensuring our funded projects connect meaningfully with viewers and participants. Visit our Vimeo page to watch a recent presentation at the Center with culture provocateur and blogger Nina Simon—an event that launched our ongoing professional development series on audience engagement.

With so much to explore and experience, we invite you to bookmark our website and visit us often for up-to-date information on the Center's Initiatives and our constituents' projects, as well as the programming and creative work in arts and heritage to which we are deeply committed.

Click here to view our 2011 Art Notes PDF for information about works of art in the Center’s offices.