vibrantly colored

Houston BIPOC arts organizations receive unprecedented $2 million grant

Houston arts veteran Sixto Wagan calls this $2 million gift "historic."

Photo by Trish Badger

As a dynamic professional traversing Houston's myriad arts worlds, Sixto Wagan has enjoyed a front-row seat in witnessing the evolution of the city’s cultural growth.

Now, the veteran of some of Houston’s most prestigious arts purveyors is overseeing a game-changing infusion of cash to arts groups centered on people of color.

The Black Indigenous People of Color (BIPOC) Arts Network and Fund (BANF) has announced $2 million to organizations and fiscally sponsored artist collectives in Greater Houston’s Black, Latinx, Indigenous, Asian American, Pacific Islander, Middle Eastern, and other communities of color. The $2 million, which will be awarded by the end of 2021, represents a (current) $12.4 million initiative that will provide funding over five years to BIPOC arts communities, per a press release.

“This historic first round of funding is the beginning of a new story and a new way of how we recognize BIPOC arts communities in Greater Houston,” Wagan, BANF Houston’s project director, tells CultureMap. “Our BIPOC arts communities have demonstrated decades of leadership with work that has shaped this country’s culture and history despite being excluded from resources, funding streams, recognition and representation.”

Applications will be accepted now through October 22 at 5 pm. A website hosting the grant opportunity guidelines, including the specific set of eligibility requirements, as well as a link to the application submission portal, can be found here.

Virtual grant information sessions will be hosted on September 29 at noon CST and October 7 at 9:30 am CST. Interested applicants should register to attend at this link.

Why is this new allotment so critical? Data provided by BANF reveals that Houston arts organizations and artist collectives from multicultural communities are “excluded from philanthropy in Houston.” To wit, according to BANF, 90 percent of gifted monies go to 27 white-led organizations, while only seven percent of said public funding for the arts goes to Latino organizations.

“In the face of that and being more vulnerable to climate, public health, and economic disruptions, Black, Latinx, Indigenous, Asian American, Pacific Islander, and Middle Eastern arts organizations and artists have thrived through systemic oppression and still stand in their power contributing as they always have to this country’s arts and culture narrative,” Wagan adds.

This groundbreaking effort was born out of the Ford Foundation's America's Cultural Treasures initiative. In September 2020 the initiative committed an unprecedented $156 million to support BIPOC arts communities across the country in response to the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a press release.

The regional grantmaking initiative invested some $35 million across seven regions, including Greater Houston. Local philanthropic partners were invited to match funding in support of multi-year grant programs for cultural groups of color with “exceptional regional or local significance,” per BANF.

Locally, Houston Endowment and the Ford Foundation led the way for BANF's creation, equally donating $5 million, with additional contributions coming from The Brown Foundation, Inc., The Cullen Foundation, Kinder Foundation, and The Powell Foundation.

For Wagan, a shining star at groups such as DiverseWorks, this gift is personal.

“As a child of immigrants who didn’t admit to my classmates that I spent my weekends learning Filipino folk dance, leading this initiative gives me an opportunity to give back in a way I never imagined,” he says.

“In a city like Houston, a Filipino-American can be at the juncture of Latinx, Black, Asian and other important communities of color coming together to pursue change from a place of power, togetherness and abundance. This is a profoundly moving moment in my career and life.”

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Best April Art

9 can't-miss art events and openings happening in Houston this month

Courtesy of the Orange Show Center for Visionary Art

Art Car weekend returns April 9-12.

April is the perfect month to head outdoors and even underground for great art across Houston. The Orange Show brings days of moving art and one of the best parties of the year, as the Art Car Parade rolls into town. The Woodlands hold their own annual outdoor art festival, and the Buffalo Bayou Cistern begins its 10 year anniversary a little early with their next expansive installation. But if you prefer your art more indoors, the Menil, HMAAC, the Asia Society, and Sawyer Yards have vivid new shows to see.

“Allegiance to the People” at Houston Museum of African American Culture (now through June 6)
This first Texas solo exhibition of Afro-Caribbean American, multidisciplinary, portrait artist Kandy G. Lopez will showcase pieces of extraordinary fiber art. Lopez uses color and layered textiles to create dynamic portraits that capture the complexity and vibrancy of Caribbean and urban American everyday life. HMAAC notes that the people Lopez portrays in her work are not symbolic archetypes but real individuals she has encountered. Each portrait reflects the subjects' lived experience, while embodying cultural memory, resilience, vulnerability, and perhaps a little swagger.

“World: Photographs” at Houston Museum of African American Culture (now through June 6)
Dr. Jayasimha N. Murthy is is a board-certified pulmonologist and sleep medicine specialist practicing in Houston, but he’s also a world traveler and photographer. In this HMAAC exhibition, Murthy uses his photographic artistic skill to document his journeys, capturing moments where natural beauty, architecture, and atmosphere converge. Exhibition co-curator, John Guess, Jr., states he encountered Murthy’s work on the walls of Methodist Hospital and thought they deserved to be seen by a wider audience at the museum. The curators note that Murthy’s photographs reflect a careful awareness of light, color, and composition, while often catching fleeting atmospheric conditions that transform familiar landscapes into something extraordinary.

"Our Road Home: Gallery As Instrument” at Fresh Arts’ Winter Street Studio (April 9-May 29)
For this latest installment of Fresh Arts’ Space Taking Artist Residency initiative, director, choreographer, and ethnochoreologist Jakari Sherman will turn the gallery into a place for performance and sound art. Sherman plans to transform the space bi-weekly to feature rotating exhibitions of scenic design artwork, digital projection landscapes, documentary film screenings, and creative writing installations, all which reveal the collaborative process behind theatrical creation. Sherman hopes viewers and visitors will see how art can become homemaking as they experience weeks of performance, visual art, dance workshops, artist talks, and community gatherings.

Art Car Parade and Festival across Houston (April 9-12)
Houston’s own keeping-it-weird Orange Show presents almost a week of activities and celebrations around the internationally famous Art Car Parade. Thursday brings the Main Street Drag and its mini parades as the art cars cruise to locations across Houston, visiting with individuals that may not have the opportunity to attend the actual parade, such as schools, nursing homes, developmental centers, and hospitals. Later that day, Discovery Green and Avenida Houston become a preview art parking lot for over 100 art cars. Come out for a close look at the cars, meet the artists, and enjoy live music and art-making fun for the whole family. Friday night, don’t miss the wild costumes, more live music, interactive and performance art, food, drinks, and a huge selection of illuminated and fire-breathing art cars at the annual Legendary Art Car Ball, this year in downtown Houston.

Saturday brings the big parade, as 250 rolling art/auto masterpieces cruise through downtown and along Allen Parkway. On Sunday, the weekend ends with the Art Car Awards Ceremony back at the Orange Show Headquarters. Over $16,000 will be distributed to Art Car artists, schools, and nonprofit groups in various categories through a judging process that rates entries based on their creativity, artistic techniques, and inspiration.

Woodlands Waterway Arts Festival at Town Green Park (April 10-12)
Set along the banks of The Woodlands Waterway in Town Green Park, festival guests will have the opportunity to enjoy a vibrant outdoor gallery with authors, music, food, and kids' activities while shopping for art created by local, national, and maybe even some international artists working in a variety of mediums. For those wanting some performance art amid their visual art, look for multiple stages with live music concerts, dance performances, poetry readings, and storytelling throughout the 3 days of the festival.

"Outerworlds" at Asia Society (April 15-August 2)
Born in Baghdad and now making a home in Louisville, Kentucky, artist Vian Sora has had her artwork showcased in museums around the world. This multi-venue mid-career survey exhibition will feature 24 of Sora’s paintings which allow viewers to follow her evolution as an artist who uses bold, abstract images to depict tumultuous events of her own life.

Her artwork also depicts ancient Mesopotamian history and Iraq’s diverse natural landscapes, including its deserts, rivers, and archeological sites. Using vibrant colors, Sora splashes, pours, and sprays her paints onto canvases, sometimes creating upwards of 50 layers of oil and acrylic paint in a single work. Sora says that this she wants this multilayered effect to give concrete form to the chaos of life, and that the paintings reference the cycles of life and evolution in biology as well as the history of her homeland.

“Second Nature” at Asia Society (April 15-October 4)
Look for acclaimed sculptor Nevine Mahmoud's carved stone objects throughout the Asia Society’s public spaces, offering uncanny surprises as visitors wander the building. Mahmoud uses cutting-edge robotic processes with hand-carving techniques to shape stone, a "natural" material rendered otherworldly into both recognizable and strange shapes. Some pieces included in the scattered exhibition will be jumbo-sized fruits dripping with glass, a contorted marble faun, and children's toys that have been immortalized in white alabaster. The Asia Society notes that though Mahmoud’s subjects range from the luscious to the surreal to the playful, her sculptures play with our understanding of nature.

"The Hour Of The Dog” at Menil Collection (April 24-October 11)
The Menil gets immersive with this monumental, six-channel video and sound installation by the Ghanaian-born British artist, Sir John Akomfrah. Co-commissioned by the Menil and the Baltimore Museum of Art, this new work touches on some of the ideals of the museum's founders John and Dominique de Menil, who believed art can reveal injustice while also inspiring social change. Running a little over 50 minutes, “Hour of the Dog” explores the history of the Civil Rights movement in the American South from 1954 to 1963, examining many of the nonviolent methods used, especially marches, protests, boycotts, and voter registration efforts. To create the encompassing installation, Akomfrah used archival documentary footage, oral histories, newsreels, and photography, while also creating new footage with actors on a soundstage.

“Activism is not confined to what happens in the streets; it's bound up with who and how we remember, who and how we mourn, and how we dream forward,” Akomfrah said in a statement. “The dreams and despairs of 1960s activists still pulse through our contemporary condition, waiting for new forms, new utterances. Returning to that moment, to those voices, is less about nostalgia and more about listening again — and differently.”

“Undercurrents” at the Buffalo Bayou Cistern (April 24-January 27)
To celebrate the Cistern’s 100th Anniversary and 10-Year Mark as one of the world’s most unique public art venues, Buffalo Bayou Partnership presents this new immersive installation. Created by acclaimed multi-media artist Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, “Undercurrents” weaves together light, generated from a mile’s worth of LED devices suspended like a web just above the reflective surface of the Cistern’s waterline, with the recorded voices of five Houston writers, including Aris Kian, Jennifer Teets, Martha Serpas, Nick Flynn, and Roberto Tejada. But the installation will constantly evolve and change as visitors can also record their own voices and messages into intercoms along the path. Their voices will be mixed with the recorded writers. Together, the voices will trigger the light patterns.

“As our first truly interactive installation in the Cistern, ‘Undercurrents’ offers visitors not only something to behold, but something to become a part of,” said BBP's Vice President of External Affairs, Karen Farber. “It is such an honor to witness Rafael’s inventive studio responding to the unique conditions of the Cistern and we can’t wait for audiences see – and hear – the space through this new artwork.”

Courtesy of the Orange Show Center for Visionary Art

Art Car weekend returns April 9-12.