IU Northwest professor lands $1.3M grant to support art series
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A Chicago-based arts collective co-directed by an Indiana University Northwest associate professor has received a nearly $1.3 million grant by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
The grant from the New York-based foundation will support new works in the Floating Museum’s inflatable monument series called Floating Monuments.
School of Arts Associate Professor Jeremiah Hulsebos-Spofford said in a news release the inflatable monuments series highlights undertold narratives about communities that make up Chicago’s past and present.
The Floating Museum arts collective now employs two students and a graduate from IU Northwest, and the grant will fund two to three additional positions, such as studio assistants and docents, the university said. The positions will be available for fine arts students in the Chicagoland/Northwest Indiana area to apply for starting in the fall.
“I’m really hoping to give students in the field experience, expanding from the things they’re doing in the classroom, so they can see what the field looks like both in theory and in practice,” said Hulsebos-Spofford, a former adjunct assistant professor at the Art Institute of Chicago who joined IU Northwest in 2018.
Floating Museum creates new models exploring relationships between art, community, architecture, and public institutions using site-responsive art, design, and programming, according to the collective’s website.
Floating Monuments has featured several arts installations throughout the city, such as “Founders,” which honored the roles Indigenous people and people of color have had in shaping Chicago.