INNOVATORS Gold Award - New Orleans City Business

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