Description
The Luce Foundation’s Religion and Theology Program seeks to deepen understanding of religion as a source of division and a site of common ground, an agent of inequality and a force for social transformation. Our work strengthens knowledge of religion’s complex and contested place in public life; diversifies intellectual inquiry in this area; and promotes more curious and civil public conversations. We build initiatives that creatively engage religion in pursuit of a more just and compassionate future.
As we seek to grow and strengthen the creative efforts of diverse knowledge makers, the program has deliberately sought to return in fresh ways to support for work at the intersection of religion and the arts. The program has a long history of grant support for projects and initiatives focused on the arts and religion, though that support has been somewhat sporadic in the last decades.
More recent grants have supported projects emphasizing the materiality of religion, including, for example, larger grants to support projects at Yale University, Saint Louis University, Ohio State University; and smaller, special grants to support projects on votive giving (Bard Graduate Center), Shaker arts and culture (Fordham University, in collaboration with the Shaker Museum | Mount Lebanon), and spirituality, the arts, and social justice (Rothko Chapel). Numerous other projects supported by grants from the program in recent years have also included substantial engagement with cultural institutions, artists, and artistic communities.
In September 2019, the Religion and Theology Program recommended a grant of $40,000 to support a summer institute planned by BMCM+AC, in collaboration with UNC Asheville. The institute, held in October 2021, sought to take an expansive understanding of religion and spirituality, folding in workshops, exhibitions, lectures, and performances, and focusing in particular on the role of the arts in religious and spiritual experience. Materials from the institute are available on BMCM+AC’s website: https://www.blackmountaincollege.org/faith-in-arts/
Building on this institute, the proposed new special grant to BMCM+AC would support the extension of its “Faith in Arts” initiative in 2022, funding two additional chapbooks that emerged from the 2021 institute (as part of a series produced in collaboration with art publisher Atelier Editions); and supporting exploratory activities that will allow BMCM+AC to define the 2023/2024 Faith in Arts institute it aims to convene in collaboration with UNC Asheville. As the proposal indicates, activities will include digital research, the commissioning of video-based art, the hosting a composer/performer, and an engagement with a small set of thought partners who will assist in the conceptualization of plans for the institute.
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