INNOVATORS Gold Award - New Orleans City Business
INNOVATORS Gold Award - New Orleans City Business
INNOVATORS Gold Award - New Orleans City Business
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NONPROFIT<br />
Louisiana ArtWorks<br />
Key innovation: a nonprofit contemporary arts space<br />
with 19 resident studios<br />
Biggest clients: contemporary visual artists<br />
Where they’re based: <strong>New</strong> <strong>Orleans</strong><br />
Top executive: Shirley Trusty Corey, CEO<br />
Year introduced: residency program began in June<br />
PHOTO BY FRANK AYMAMI<br />
AFTER A DECADE OF planning, construction and<br />
fundraising, Louisiana ArtWorks is finally realizing its<br />
vision — the nonprofit contemporary arts space welcomed<br />
the first wave of artist residents in June.<br />
“There’s been a tremendous outcry and a tremendous<br />
excitement that’s in the air. This is a building that many<br />
people thought had sunk. They didn’t think we were<br />
going to be able to get this building up and running,”<br />
director Joy Glidden said.<br />
With 93,000 square feet, 19 resident studios and<br />
resources for everything from glass-working to printmaking,<br />
the size and scope of Louisiana ArtWorks is unprecedented<br />
in the state. Glidden said there’s nothing quite<br />
like ArtWorks anywhere else in the country.<br />
The residency program is designed to cater to postgraduate<br />
artists who may not have the resources to continue<br />
their work after finishing school.<br />
“There are 11 universities in the vicinity — if you<br />
include LSU — six of which have B.A., M.S.A. and M.A.<br />
programs in visual arts, so you have a tremendous amount<br />
of visual artists coming out of the area but couldn’t necessarily<br />
stay and see a full career occur,” Glidden said.<br />
The program also serves to retain some of the state’s<br />
best contemporary artists. ArtWorks residents are required<br />
to have lived in Louisiana for at least three years before<br />
applying.<br />
“We’re trying to entice people to come back, so a lot of<br />
our (admissions) decision-making this time around was<br />
related to Katrina,” Glidden said. “That was one of our<br />
main prerogatives, to make sure that people had space to<br />
do their work.”<br />
In addition to the range of services it provides for its<br />
artists, ArtWorks is also unique in that it invites the public<br />
to interact with the artists in their workspaces.<br />
“The actual building lends itself completely to the<br />
idea of the public interfacing and viewing the artist while<br />
they work, thereby opening the dialogue, thereby opening<br />
the inquiries, the questions,” Glidden said.<br />
These types of personal interactions, Glidden said,<br />
often increase the viewer’s appreciation of the art.<br />
“With more sophisticated projects, (such as) minimalism<br />
or conceptual pieces or the stuff that’s a little harder<br />
to grasp because it’s not figurative, that requires a dialogue;<br />
it requires an artist talking about exactly about<br />
what’s going on and what the direction is.”•<br />
— Leah Bartos<br />
Louisiana ArtWorks, led by director Joy Glidden, started accepting artists for its resident studios in June.<br />
46A 2008 Innovator of the Year