June 2008.
Funding Arts Network (FAN), in partnership with the John S. and James
L. Knight Foundation, presented the $50,000 Knight New Work Award for 2008 to The Wolfsonian- FIU in May at FAN‘s annual awards luncheon in Miami.
The award funds the creation and implementation of a multimedia exhibition, Thoughts on Democracy: Reinterpreting Rockwell’s Four Freedoms. The project was inspired by the eponymous posters of 1943, copies of which were recently gifted to the museum by Leonard A. Lauder. The Wolfsonian – FIU proposal was selected by meeting FAN’s criteria of high artistic merit and potential to reach the broadest possible cross-section of the Miami-Dade community.
The award, the largest in FAN’s 11-year history, is in addition to the organization’s annual arts awards, which exceed $200,000. To date, FAN has given $2.25 million in grants to support more than 75 visual and performing arts groups in Miami-Dade County.
Thoughts on Democracy will consist of new posters created by approximately 50 leading visual and graphic artists of both local and international renown. The artists have been invited to respond to Rockwell’s “Four Freedom” posters, commissioned by the government and inspired by Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s impassioned “Four Freedoms” speech to Congress in 1941. The project will amplify FDR’s vision of a “world founded upon four essential human freedoms”: Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Worship, Freedom from Want and Freedom from Fear.
Thoughts on Democracy goes on display in the museum’s lobby July 5th, 2008, and continues until the culmination of Art Basel 08 in early December. In addition to a free-of-charge exhibition, the new works will be exhibited through the Internet using web-based tools, virtual worlds, and social networking sites; in newspapers and on billboards; and through public educational programming in conjunction with the Miami-Dade Public School’s Museum Education Program.
For more information, please call: 305.531.1001
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