Description

Purpose of grant: For ACC Focus on Southeast Asia: Connecting Communities.
Amount recommended: A three-year grant of $380,000.
Summary: The Asian Cultural Council (ACC) provides opportunities for cultural exchange to artists, scholars, arts professionals and arts organizations in Asia and the United States. Through fellowships and grants, convenings and public programs, ACC fosters connections to advance international understanding and mutual respect, goals shared by the Luce Foundation. ACC has regional affiliates in Hong Kong, Manila, Taipei and Tokyo. 
For historical reasons, much of ACC’s funding is earmarked for Asians to come to the U.S. Recent HLF grants to ACC (2007, 2010 and 2014) have supported a program to send American artists and museum professionals to Asia. The Council now seeks funding to build this program in new directions in Southeast Asia (SEA). The request is informed by an HLF special grant in 2018 with which ACC conducted interviews and surveys of artists and arts organizations in Cambodia, Laos, Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia and Vietnam, to assess interest in working with Americans in ways that best respond to the arts landscape in the region.
Our grant would support four to six fellowships per year for American artists and arts organizations, for virtual and in-person collaborations tailored to the needs and priorities expressed by both Americans and their SEAsian counterparts. Funding would be made available, as well, to SEA hosts and partners. American candidates would be drawn from ACC’s networks in New York City and elsewhere, including from community-based partnerships that ACC has established in Chicago and San Francisco, with funding from the Mellon Foundation, to bring greater diversity to its grantee and applicant pool. Pilot efforts over the last two years, including in virtual formats during the pandemic, have helped ACC gain additional insight into how best to create mutually beneficial opportunities.
Grant-supported activities would include, in the grant’s final year, an international convening on the role of cultural exchange in the growth and development of a thriving arts ecosystem, to examine both traditional and alternative models for training, presentation and interpretation of the arts. A publication would chronicle the findings of the convening and of the prior SEA survey project.
Recommendation: That the Directors of the Henry Luce Foundation approve a three-year grant of $380,000 to the Asian Cultural Council to support ACC Focus on Southeast Asia: Connecting Communities .
https://www.asianculturalcouncil.org/