Description

While the Theology Program currently provides support primarily for seminaries, divinity schools, and research universities, the program is periodically able to consider support for thematically relevant projects based at others sorts of institutions. This proposed grant to BMCM+AC would fall into that latter category, extending the program’s support for work at the intersections of religion and the arts.
The Theology 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 Theology Program 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) and Shaker arts and culture (Fordham University, in collaboration with the Shaker Museum | Mount Lebanon).
The summer institute planned by BMCM+AC, in collaboration with UNC Asheville, will 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.
The Luce Foundation’s grant would provide support for key speakers and fund scholarships for students and other early career participants in the institute; support documentation of the institute and related activities by André Daughtry (whose work as a “speculative social documentarian” explores contemporary experiences of the spiritual, mystical, and theological); help launch a digital publication growing out of the institute; and provide partial support for a related exhibition and performance.
The Luce Foundation has previously awarded one grant to BMCM+AC ($30,000, 2017, American Art).