Denver Biennial Update
BECA Foundation invites emerging artists
No updates to the Denver Biennial website. No tweets in almost 50 days. No news from the Denver Office of Cultural Affairs. At least not yet, but director Erin Trapp says: "We expect to announce the latest list of arts and culture programming within the next 7-10 days, which will include central exhibition programming and satellite programming."
Bruce Mau has updated his website with information on a new book, Glimmer, by Warren Berger. But curiously there is no mention of the Biennial under the projects linkn on his website either. So, while all appears quiet on the Western front, Denver is still slated to host the biennial of the hemisphere in summer 2010.
Meanwhile, one satellite project has emerged that is inviting artists to participate in Denver's art gambols next summer. CURATE THIS! A project of the BECA Foundation (Bridge for Emerging Contemporary Arts) is set to host what organizers are describing as the largest exhibition of emerging art ever hosted, in Denver. That's right, not New York or L.A., Venice or Shanghai-Denver!
Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper wrote the official letter welcoming CURATE THIS! As a satellite project of the biennial, though the city is providing no funding for it or any other project associated with the biennial.
"CURATE THIS! Will showcase the best up and coming artists and designers in as many as 200 venues across metropolitan Denver," the official letter reads.
Those venues are yet to be determined, but Melissa Roberts of BECA and CURATE THIS! is in the midst of searching venues out, while putting out calls for artists and taking proposals and looking for sponsors and generating press releases - all from a vacant studio space somewhere in Denver's Rhino district. She is seeking a commitment of 36 venues by the end of November. Nothing has ever been done on this scale for emerging artists, Roberts said, adding that the project is "turning into a monster in the best sense of the word." Working as facilitators, Roberts and her partner Kurt Schlough will have no hand in the selection process, she clarified.
Emerging artists and designers are invited to submit to become one of the 250 projects selected by a team of five international curators, at least four of whom might remain permanently anonymous. The only named one so far is Helen Pheby, curator of the Yorkshire Sculpture Park in England. Roberts said the BECA Gallery advisors will choose an additional 750 artists, potentially bringing the total number of emerging artists and designers with work on view in Denver next summer to 1000.
In answer to the question how will artists put together these projects and find the funding necessary, BECA has just launched a website called The Project Bridge, where for $3.50 a month a creative person can post needs and wants and perhaps find a benefactor or supporter for their idea or collaborate with others who have similar visions.
What remains to be seen is how much money Denver-area businesses will provide for all of this, in an environment in which the new arts initiative clearly demands private capital.
Roberts wrote in an email, after our phone conversation:
"We hope they [Denver businesses] will want to support CURATE THIS! with volunteers, venue sponsorships and other mutually beneficial sponsorships to enable this historical art event to make the biggest impact on their future bottom lines that it can."
Roberts asserts that CURATE THIS!'s reach is international. "The possibilities are endless," Roberts said. "For collaboration, connection. If the biennial and CURATE THIS! doesn't get exposed, we don't know what we're missing out on. We have the ability to do it well or to do it phenomenally well. It all depends on the funding."
The BECA Foundation makes this comment
Friday 13 November, 2009