Images from The Sachs Program for Arts Innovation's 2020 Grant Award recipients.
The Sachs Program for Arts Innovation is thrilled to announce our 2020 Grant Awards. We are awarding upwards of $270,000 in funding to 34 successful applicants this year, which marks a record high for our program in its three years running. Grants are being awarded in eight categories, and the recipients represent a diverse cross-section of Penn’s community: students, staff, and faculty from seven of Penn’s twelve schools, as well as many of Penn’s arts and cultural centers.
“These new grant winners embody Keith and Kathy Sachs’ founding vision of advancing the arts across every part of our campus—and supporting the next generations of artists in all disciplines.”
—University Provost Wendell Pritchett
As we recognize the 2020 recipients, we also want to acknowledge the challenging moment we all find ourselves in. It’s a moment in which the arts can serve as a refuge – as sources for hope and sites of empathy – as well as a vehicle for inspiration – prompting us to look ahead and imagine what might be. While these projects were all proposed before the COVID-19 crisis hit the US, they certainly respond to our current time and remind us why the arts matter.
“In its third year, the Sachs Program is truly doing what it set out to, and we’re particularly proud of the excellence and diversity of projects this year.” — Vice Provost for Faculty Anita Allen
We feel fortunate to be able to support these projects, and we will do our best to continue to serve and support our community now and into the future. With this said, it brings great joy to announce the 2020 Grant Awards:
- Aaron Levy
Echando Ganas - Abhinav Ramkumar and William Deo
Using Novel Materials for Adaptable Acoustics - 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
Performing Environmental Feminisms - Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts
Annenberg Center Remounts Toni Morrison’s Dreaming Emmett with Artist-in-Residence DNAWORKS - Asian American Studies
The Asian American Experience and the Craft of Writing with Jenny Zhang - Bethany Monea
First-Gen Stories: A Web Series - David Chavannes
langa dan ruop - Department of Music
Philadelphia Student Composers Project - Elizabeth Bynum
Audible Metropolis - Emilio Martinez Poppe and Emmanuela Soria Ruiz
Stages of Learning - Erin O’Malley
Gendered Exile: A Narrative of Chinese (Trans)national Adoption - Flannery Cunningham
Groundwater - Graduate Fine Arts
Annual MFA Satellite Show - General Robotics, Automation, Sensing & Perception (GRASP) Laboratory and Fine Arts and Design
Robotics Art Residency - Harold Milton-Gorvie, Shalom Obiago, and Evan Thomas
Cool Kid Rules (working title) - Incubation Series
Incubation Series 2020-2021 - Ivanco Talevski
Back and Forth: The Distance In Between (working title) - Jean-Christophe Cloutier
ComicsLab - Levester Williams
dreaming of a beyond: Philadelphia - Living Room
Living Room - Lorene Cary
#VoteThatJawn - Mike Crane
Futures II - Ministry of Culture in Exile
Taste of the Sanctioned - Molly Lester
Building Ghosts - Nathan Courtright
On remembering, ceasing to be - Office of the Curator
Currents (working title) - Penn Museum
A Contemporary Queen in the Penn Museum - Q-INE
Q-INE - Roopa Vasudevan
Machine Readable - Sosena Solomon
GENET (working title) - Tamir Williams
A Space to Appear, A Space to Tarry - Toni Bowers
European Pantomime and the Films of Charlie Chaplin - Viola Bordon
Bet / Salt Room - Wolf Humanities Center
Wolf Humanities Center Year of Choice Presents PHILADANCO Participatory Workshop
Full descriptions of each project and listed associations can be accessed through the Grant Awards section of our website.
Download Press Release (PDF)
Download Grant Awards List (PDF)
The decisions around what to fund each year are extremely difficult and not taken lightly. This year, similar to last year, we employed a two-stage evaluation process. Applications were first reviewed by a group of committee members, including former grantees, faculty, staff, and students. There were 4 committees in total. Feedback from each committee was then shared with the Sachs Program Advisory Board, who made the final decisions over the course of multiple meetings.
Over the course of this academic year, the Sachs Program also provided additional funding to students and student groups, in the form of Ben Art Bucks: small, quick-turnaround grants up to $100 for individuals and $500 for student groups. These small grants funded a range of projects and activities, such as visits to live performances, the production and presentation of new artworks, purchasing supplies, travel for arts research and arts appreciation, and programming for student groups. Over 40 were awarded, in total.
Additionally, through a partnership with the College of Arts and Sciences, we supported nine First-Year Seminars, which took place during the fall 2019 and spring 2020 semesters. Those courses, which span the disciplines of Anthropology, Classical Studies, English, History, History of Art, Music, Political Science, and Urban Studies, are also listed among the 2020 Grant Awards on our website.