2020 Grant Awards

In 2020, The Sachs Program for Arts Innovation awarded its highest number of grants in its three years running. Through the annual adjudicated grants process, we supported 34 diverse and ambitious projects and awarded upwards of $270,000 in funding.

Additionally, through a partnership with the College of Arts and Sciences, we supported 9 First-Year Seminars, which took place during the fall 2019 and spring 2020 semesters. Through our Ben Art Bucks program, we awarded quick-turnaround grants to over 40 students and student groups, supporting a range of activities related to creating and/or experiencing the arts. And, through our 2020 Black Artists Support Grant, we funded 8 new projects by alumni, faculty, staff, and students.

We are grateful to be able to support all of this wonderful arts activity on campus, and to be a resource to our community in this way. With this said, it brings great joy to share with you our 2020 Grant Awards.

Echando Ganas
- Aaron Levy
- School of Arts & Sciences
30 Americans
- Aaron Levy
- College of Arts & Sciences
Using Novel Materials for Adaptable Acoustics
- Abhinav Ramkumar and William Deo
- College of Arts & Sciences, School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (Penn Engineering), Vagelos Integrated Program in Energy Research (VIPER)
The Afterverse
- Alex Smith
- The Rotunda
Performing Environmental Feminisms
- Alice Paul Center for Research on Gender, Sexuality, and Women; Gender, Sexuality and Women's Studies Program; Native American and Indigenous Studies; Department of Music
- Alice Paul Center for Research on Gender, Sexuality, and Women, Native American and Indigenous Studies (NAIS) Initiative, School of Arts & Sciences
Annenberg Center Remounts Toni Morrison’s Dreaming Emmett with Artist-in-Residence DNAWORKS
- Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts
- Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts, School of Arts & Sciences
The Asian American Experience and the Craft of Writing with Jenny Zhang
- Asian American Studies
- School of Arts & Sciences
First-Gen Stories: A Web Series
- Bethany Monea
- Graduate School of Education
The Gathering Workshop Series
- Black Cultural Studies Collective
- School of Arts & Sciences
Arts and Well-being
- Carol Muller
- College of Arts & Sciences
langa dan ruop
- David Chavannes
- School of Arts & Sciences
Politics of Reproduction
- Dawn Teele
- College of Arts & Sciences
Philadelphia Student Composers Project
- Department of Music
- School of Arts & Sciences
Audible Metropolis
- Elizabeth Bynum
- School of Arts & Sciences
Stages of Learning
- Emilio Martínez Poppe and Emmanuela Soria Ruiz
- Weitzman School of Design (PennDesign)
Gendered Exile: A Narrative of Chinese (Trans)national Adoption
- Erin O’Malley
- College of Arts & Sciences
Witness
- Farrah Rahaman and Tshay Williams
- Annenberg School for Communication, School of Arts & Sciences
Transmission as Resistance: Redox Drip
- Fields Harrington
- Weitzman School of Design (PennDesign)
Groundwater
- Flannery Cunningham
Robotics Art Residency
- General Robotics, Automation, Sensing & Perception (GRASP) Laboratory and Fine Arts and Design
- GRASP at PERCH, School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (Penn Engineering), Weitzman School of Design (PennDesign)
Recipes for the Revolution: Meals Our Ancestors Made Possible
- Gillian Maris Jones
- School of Arts & Sciences
Annual MFA Satellite Show
- Graduate Fine Arts
- Weitzman School of Design (PennDesign)
Cool Kid Rules (working title)
- Harold Milton-Gorvie, Shalom Obiago, and Evan Thomas
- College of Arts & Sciences, Wharton
Incubation Series 2020-2021
- Incubation Series
- School of Arts & Sciences, Weitzman School of Design (PennDesign)
Back and Forth: The Distance In Between (working title)
- Ivanco Talevski
- Weitzman School of Design (PennDesign)
ComicsLab
- Jean-Christophe Cloutier
- School of Arts & Sciences
Why College?
- Jonathan Zimmerman
- College of Arts & Sciences
The “Rights of Nature” in Times of Conflict and Transition
- Kristina Lyons
- College of Arts & Sciences
dreaming of a beyond: Philadelphia
- Levester Williams
- Penn Arts and Sciences Online Learning, School of Arts & Sciences
Living Room
- Living Room
- School of Social Policy and Practice, Weitzman School of Design (PennDesign)
#VoteThatJawn
- Lorene Cary
- Center for Programs in Contemporary Writing, School of Arts & Sciences
Race, Class & Punishment
- Marie Gottschalk
- College of Arts & Sciences
Sickle
- Maya Arthur
- Kelly Writers House, School of Arts & Sciences
Futures II
- Mike Crane
- Weitzman School of Design (PennDesign)
Taste of the Sanctioned
- Ministry of Culture in Exile
- School of Arts & Sciences, Weitzman School of Design (PennDesign)
Building Ghosts
- Molly Lester
- PennPraxis, Weitzman School of Design (PennDesign)
On remembering, ceasing to be
- Nathan Courtright
- School of Arts & Sciences
Currents (working title)
- Office of the Curator
- Arthur Ross Gallery, Office of the Curator
Of Horses, Bows, & Fermented Milk: The Turkish Empires In 15 Objects
- Oscar Aguirre Mandujano
- College of Arts & Sciences
A Contemporary Queen in the Penn Museum
- Penn Museum
- Penn Museum
2020 Ben Art Bucks Grants
- Penn Undergraduate and Graduate Students
Q-INE
- Q-INE
- College of Arts & Sciences
The Sis Uprising
- Ricardo A. Bracho
- Alice Paul Center for Research on Gender, Sexuality, and Women, School of Arts & Sciences
Machine Readable
- Roopa Vasudevan
- Annenberg School for Communication
All at Once
- Rosa Leff
- Graduate School of Education
Iliad and Its Afterlife
- Sheila Murnaghan
- College of Arts & Sciences
GENET (working title)
- Sosena Solomon
- Weitzman School of Design (PennDesign)
A Space to Appear, A Space to Tarry
- Tamir Williams
- School of Arts & Sciences
European Pantomime and the Films of Charlie Chaplin
- Toni Bowers
- School of Arts & Sciences
Bet / Salt Room
- Viola Bordon
- Weitzman School of Design (PennDesign)
Wolf Humanities Center Year of Choice Presents PHILADANCO Participatory Workshop
- Wolf Humanities Center
- Wolf Humanities Center

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