Featured News | April 14, 2021
The Wyoming Arts Council is pleased to announce a new initiative: a Native Art Fellowship.
For years, the Wyoming Arts Council has hosted annual fellowships for the visual, literary, and performing arts that are merit-based and juried by professionals from outside the state.
This year, the Arts Council is also offering a Native Art Fellowship. Structured similarly to the other fellowships, the Native Art Fellowship is an unrestricted $3,000 award that is open to Native artists based within Wyoming, across any artistic discipline or medium (visual, literary, performing, folk & traditional, etc.) This fellowship is designed to raise the profiles of the highly talented Native artists in Wyoming and celebrate their artistry.
This fellowship was partially inspired by a presentation at the 2019 Wyoming Arts Summit in Cheyenne from Abi Whiteing (Blackfeet) and Catherine Bryan (Navajo) of the First Nations Development Institute.
Their presentation focused on the ways that Native communities and causes, including Native artists, have been under-supported by philanthropic organizations and grantmaking, as outlined in their publication, “We Need to Change How We Think: Perspectives on Philanthropy’s Underfunding of Native Communities and Causes.” The Native Art Fellowship will serve as another step in the Wyoming Arts Council’s initiative towards equitable grantmaking practices.
For the fellowship’s inaugural year, the two jurors will be Molina Parker (Lakota), of Red Shirt, SD, and Adrienne Benjamin (Anishinaabe) of Isle, MN.
The Wyoming Arts Council would like to thank the many partners who assisted in the development of the Native Art Fellowship, including Hunter Old Elk (Crow & Yakama) of the Plains Indian Museum at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West, artist Robert Martinez (Northern Arapaho), Lorre Hoffman with Makerspace 307, and Sharon Dynak and Tracey Kikut with the Ucross Foundation.
Further information can be found on the Arts Council website, wyomingartscouncil.org. The application and a complete list of eligibility requirements can be found on Submittable. Applications for the Native Art Fellowship will be accepted from April 15 – June 10.
For more information, contact Creative Arts Specialist, Taylor Craig at taylor.craig@wyo.gov or 307-274-6673.
The Wyoming Arts Council believes that experiencing the arts should be accessible for all, including people with mental and/or physical disabilities, older adults, military/veterans, people living in institutions and those who lack access to the arts due to geographic isolation, cultural difference and economic hardship.
