NYC Department of Cultural Affairs

Hold on to your paintbrushes 🖌🎨—NYC’s cultural sector just got a windfall of capital funding—$213.8 million to be exact!! Yesterday, Cultural Affairs Commissioner Laurie Cumbo joined community and cultural leaders at The Art Students League of New York to announce this new capital investment for 80 cultural organizations across the five boroughs as part of the Fiscal Year 2025 budget. This year, the League received $4.3 million in city funding to support its 150th Anniversary Capital Renovation Project, the single largest award the project has received to date. 💪 “Culture is a pillar of our city’s economy and a critical part of healthy, safe, thriving communities. No other city in America supports its cultural institutions like we do through DCLA’s capital program, partnering with institutions on construction, renovation, and equipment projects to deliver remarkable cultural facilities that are open and accessible to all. Under the Adams administration, we’ve made record-setting investments in our cultural sector, and this year is no different.” – Cultural Affairs Commissioner Laurie Cumbo Read more about the new funding and the League's exciting project in the Observer: https://lnkd.in/e77Eas_d

NYC cultural community - we're still looking for panelists to review applications to the FY 2025 Cultural Development Fund (CDF)! The CDF is one of the primary ways city funding is distributed to arts and cultural nonprofits across the five boroughs. For the upcoming award cycle, panels will collectively review applications from over 650 groups, and work alongside agency staff to make recommendations that will lead to the allocation of Cultural Affairs’ public dollars – and that’s where you come in! The Department of Cultural Affairs is seeking panelists with current expertise in the arts and cultural landscape of NYC to bring a wide range of perspectives, experiences, and backgrounds. We're particularly eager to hear from panelists based in Queens, the Bronx, and Staten Island! This is your chance to serve our cultural community and gain the experience of participating actively in public arts funding. Each year, CDF grants support hundreds of organizations representing the full breadth of NYC’s cultural life. Selected panelists will convene virtually in the late summer and of fall 2024 and will receive a $480 stipend for their work evaluating FY25 CDF grant applications. Learn more & submit a panelist application here: on.nyc.gov/CDFpanels.

"Future artists, I want you to continue to shine, and I want you to continue to create. I want you to continue to explore your passion because your passions are what makes New York City great." encouraged Laurie Cumbo, Commissioner of NYC Department of Cultural Affairs, to the featured students at the P.S. Art Times Square Event. We are so proud to partner with NYC Department of Education and The Metropolitan Museum of Art to highlight the artworks made by students all across New York City. Thank you to the Times Square Advertising Coalition - TSAC for displaying the student artworks on billboards in TimesSquare! Learn more about this incredible event and P.S. Art 2024 at studioinaschool.org!

We recently joined Queens Public Library and NYC Department of Design and Construction to cut the ribbon on the *spectactular* new Far Rockaway library!! 📚 Commissioner Laurie Cumbo joined local leaders to open this remarkable, $39 million library - designed by Snøhetta and built by our good friends at DDC - which includes a new #PercentForArtNYC commission by artist Pablo Helguera: "Feynman's Code." Helguera created “Feynman's Code” as a tribute to the Nobel Prize-winner and theoretical physicist Richard Feynman (1918-1988), who grew up in this neighborhood and attended Far Rockaway High School. Feynman is widely regarded as one of the most influential physicists of the 20th century. One of his contributions to physics are the Feynman diagrams, pictorial representations describing the behavior of subatomic particles. For the Far Rockaway Library, Helguera has integrated Feynman’s work into an alphabet, where every letter is replaced by a Feynman diagram. The two phrases incorporated in the two sections of the building include a phrase from a poem by Richard Feynman himself, “I, a universe of atoms, an atom in the universe,” as well as a phrase by Emily Dickinson, “The brain is wider than the sky.” This project, aside from being a tribute to Richard Feynman, celebrates the value of intellectual curiosity. In 2019, Helguera’s design for the project received a Excellence in Design Award from the Public Design Commission. Today, libraries are so much more than places to borrow books (though they are most definitely still that, too). They are job training facilities, cultural hubs, and community centers all rolled into one. The Adams Administration is committed to making our city more livable for all New Yorkers, and that means ensuring New Yorkers have access to top notch civic and public spaces — and libraries are one of the most important forms of civic space we have. We're proud to have worked with the Far Rockaway community to create this public artwork that will engage visitors to this extraordinary new library for generations to come. Photos by DDC and DCLA. #NYCulture #Libraries #Queens #NYC #FarRockaway

Earlier this week, we broke ground on a new home for the legendary Lower East Side arts space, ABC No Rio!!! With $21 million in city support, the new facility will feature an innovative, energy-efficient "passive house" design, and will include a photo darkroom, screen printing facility, small press library, digital resources, and expanded space for art, music, performance, educational and community activities, as well as meeting and office space for ABC No Rio and other organizations. Making our city more livable means investing in and strengthening our public, cultural, and community spaces. The NYC Department of Cultural Affairs is proud to support ABC Rio and cultural groups across our city to create safe, thriving communities. https://lnkd.in/e4AQmbrZ #NYCulture #ABCNoRio #DIY #Arts #ArtsFunding #construction

"Cultural activity and public safety are closely linked: research shows that the presence of cultural assets correlates with better outcomes in public safety, health and education. So while public safety is definitely important for attracting cultural audiences, the reverse is also true. A neighborhood with lively, vibrant cultural programming is a safer, stronger community." Cultural Affairs Commissioner Laurie Cumbo recently spoke with City & State about how cultural institutions are reinvigorating post-pandemic life in NYC. Read the full interview: https://lnkd.in/ezyWrjMq #NYCulture #NYC #Arts #Culture #Economy #SocialWellbeing #Tourism

What’s big and green and will SOON have art all over? 🏗 🏙 🎨 😍 We’re thrilled to release a new gallery of artworks that will grace those ubiquitous, forest green sidewalk sheds, construction fences, and scaffolding found across the city!! This new gallery of pre-approved artwork has been created through our #CityCanvas program, which we manage in partnership with NYC Department of Buildings to transform hundreds of miles of sidewalk sheds, construction fences, and scaffolding into opportunities for artists to create extraordinary artworks. New artwork is now available for building and site owners to display across the five boroughs. Eight artists, selected through an open call announced earlier this year, are featured in the inaugural gallery of pre-approved City Canvas artworks. “‘Every square inch of New York City needs to have art and culture at its center, and this is a way to do it’... Putting art on scaffolding will make people ‘think differently about their neighborhoods. It creates wonder. That’s what we want.’” - NYC Cultural Affairs Commissioner Laurie Cumbo to the The New York Times. In July 2023, Mayor Adams and DOB Commissioner Jimmy Oddo announced “Get Sheds Down,” a sweeping overhaul of rules aimed at removing construction sheds from city streets more quickly. Under City Canvas, formerly unsightly sheds that must be in place to protect the public can be transformed into platforms for local artists. The transformation of these unsightly structures into vibrant platforms for public artwork joins a suite of initiatives - from revolutionizing trash pickup, to implementing the country’s largest outdoor dining program, to planting thousands of trees - to make our city cleaner, more enjoyable, and more livable for all New Yorkers. Visit the link in our bio to read the full New York Times article and go to nyc.gov/CityCanvas to explore the artwork. #NYCulture #PublicArt #NYC https://lnkd.in/ev39uN_P

The Bronx Museum is one our city's cultural treasures, a cutting-edge arts institution in the heart of one of the most vibrant creative communities in the world. We are thrilled to start construction on this transformative project, designed by Marvel Architects, which marks a new chapter for the museum, and proud of the city's $33 million investment. #NYCulture #NYC #Bronx #CulturalFunding #CulturalCapital #Construction

📣 Calling all artists! Applications are open for the 2024-25 cycle of the Public Artists in Residence (PAIR) program! Cultural Affairs’ PAIR program embeds socially engaged artists in City agencies to utilize their creative, collaborative art practice to offer innovative solutions to pressing civic challenges. The residency provides artists with $40,000 in funding. This year, artists working in all media may apply to work with the following host agencies: 🧒 NYC Administration for Children's Services: Within ACS’s Division of Youth and Family Justice, the Office of Juvenile Justice Programs and Services is seeking an artist who will collaborate with youth in custodial care to contribute to lasting positive change in the lives of young people through healing, self-discovery, and advocacy. 🤝 New York City Commission on Human Rights is looking for an artist who can explore longstanding challenges in tackling discrimination, taking a fresh look at some of the root causes and barriers to reporting which can skew national and local data, and which may relate to individual and shared identities, and also explore solutions. 🚇 New York City Human Resources Administration will work with their Public Artist in Residence focusing on the city’s Fair Fares program, which subsidizes low income New Yorkers’ public transit costs. The PAIR will collaborate with agency partners to bring awareness of the program to the public and increase dialogue around transportation equity and the number of New Yorkers taking advantage of this opportunity. ⚖️ NYC Mayor's Office of Equity & Racial Justice is seeking an artist who leverage a range of storytelling techniques to help to increase the visibility of communities facing disparities, elevate the understanding of racial equity, and amplify the mission of the office to advance equity and create transformative change to promote racial justice in NYC. View the PAIR application page for more information, guidelines, and eligibility. The deadline to apply is 11:59pm on Sunday, August 25, 2024. 👉Visit nyc.gov/pair to apply!

🚨 Big News! 🚨 The New York City adopted budget includes a $53 million investment in our cultural institutions!!! Last week, Commissioner Laurie Cumbo joined Mayor Eric Adams, Speaker Adrienne Adams, and cultural leaders at City Hall to celebrate major new funding for the cultural community in the upcoming 2025 Fiscal Year Budget, with $53 million added for the Cultural Institutions Group and Cultural Development Fund!! “Once again, the Adams administration is showing up for our cultural community with a historic investment that will put people to work, deliver extraordinary cultural programs in every corner of our city, and make New York a safer, stronger, more vibrant place for all of us. I want to give a shout out to the advocates, artists, cultural workers, and others who showed up at hearings, rallies, and other engagements to make the case for culture to their fellow New Yorkers.” – Commissioner Cumbo Culture serves as a source of inspiration, a unifying force for communities, and a driver of economic activity. With this latest record-breaking investment, we’re proud to continue to deliver these benefits to New Yorkers in every corner of the city. #NYCulture