The 2008 Coby Grants
In the News and Notes section of our April/May 2009 issue we shared that the
2008 Coby Grants had been announced. Here we share a complete list of the awards.
The Coby Foundation,
which supports projects in the textile and needle arts field, made grants
totaling $525,000 to fourteen organizations in 2008. The only foundation in the
country with such a focus, the foundation limits its support to nonprofit organizations
in the mid-Atlantic and Northeast. The 2008 grants represented an astonishing
range of cultures, textile traditions, and periods, from contemporary East African
printed textiles, modern Bengali quilts, Japanese textiles, and twenty-first century
Goth style fashion to eighteenth-century American needlework and nineteenth-century
German Torah binders. A number of the 2008 grants fell under the foundation’s
new initiative to exhibit and document textile collections in museums that have
not mounted a major exhibit of items from their textile collection in at least
three years. The following is a list of the 2008 grants:
- Addison Gallery of American
Art ($50,000), Phillips Academy, Andover, Massachusetts, for a fifty-year
retrospective exhibit of the work of celebrated fiber artist, Sheila Hicks, scheduled
to open fall 2010.
- Adirondack Museum ($18,000),
Blue Mountain Lake, New York, for its first textile exhibit, Common Threads: 150
Years of Adirondack Quilts and Comforters, on view May 22–October 18.
- Connecticut Historical Society
($90,000), Hartford, for the exhibit Arts and Accomplishments: Early American
Needlework in Connecticut, 1740–1840, scheduled to open fall 2010.
- Cooper-Hewitt, National Design
Museum ($30,000), New York City, for the exhibit Fashioning Felt, on view
March 6–September 7.
- Erie Art Museum ($40,000),
Pennsylvania, for the exhibit Kanga & Kitenge, Cloth and Culture in East Africa,
on view through April 5.
- Grey Art Gallery ($35,000)
at New York University, New York City, for the exhibit The Poetics of Cloth: African
Textiles/Recent Art, on view fall 2008.
- Japan Society ($20,000),
in New York City, for the exhibit Serizawa: Master of Japanese Textile Design,
which will present this late Japanese textile master’s first major New York exhibit,
on view October 2–January 10, 2010.
- Distribution of the film, Blue Alchemy: Stories of Indigo, by independent
filmmaker Mary Lance ($20,000).
- Museum
at FIT ($50,000), in New York City, for the exhibit Gothic: Dark Glamour,
on view winter 2008.
- Peabody Essex Museum ($50,000),
Salem, Massachusetts, for the exhibit Wedded Bliss: The Marriage of Art
and Ceremony, on view Summer 2008.
- Philadelphia Museum of Art
($40,000) for the exhibit Nakshi Kantha: The Embroidered Quilts of Bengal,
scheduled for fall.
- Shelburne Museum ($22,000),
Vermont, for its project to add costumes to its period rooms in a project entitled
In Context: Clothing and Interiors, 1750–1950.
- Ukrainian Museum ($30,000),
New York City, for an upcoming exhibit of Ukrainian wedding-related textiles.
- Yeshiva University Museum
($30,000), Center for Jewish History, New York, for an exhibit of wimpels,
northern European Torah binders made of swaddling clothes.
The Coby Foundation is interested in projects that combine excellent scholarship
and effective interpretation. Projects may be in the arts or humanities, contemporary
or historical, but must have a public benefit. The Foundation accepts unsolicited
proposals. Inquiries should be directed to Ward L.E. Mintz, Executive Director,
The Coby Foundation, 511 Avenue of the Americas, #387, New York, NY 10011. www.cobyfoundation.org. |
