Knight Foundation picks 2015 finalists
The Knight Foundation on Monday selected 73 ideas as finalists for this year’s Knight Arts Challenge, the annual grant created to reward South Florida-spun arts projects.
Broward and Palm Beach racked up six finalists, including prominent art spaces Art and Culture Center of Hollywood, Delray Beach’s Morikami Museum and Japanese Gardens and Fort Lauderdale LGBT ensemble Gay Men’s Chorus of South Florida.
The Miami-based Knight Foundation, which whittled its list down from a field of 1,000-plus applications, will announce the grant winners on Nov. 30 during a public ceremony.
This fall, the public can also text their vote for one of several grassroots cultural groups vying for a Knight Arts Challenge People’s Choice Award worth $20,000. Knight grants have already funded pop-up bookstores, a “Super Bowl” of poetry and the Wallcast concerts at New World Center.
The other three Broward/Palm Beach nominations went to Palm Beach artist Kip Eagen, who plans to thrill public transit riders by creating a series of “artistic billboards along the Tri-Rail tracks” that become an “animated flipbook” at high speeds; REVA Development Corp., a realestate company that will build shotgun-style homes for an artist residency program in a West Palm Beach neighborhood; and Las Olas Village, a project by Las Olas gallery owner Robin Haines Merrill to re-create enlarged versions of iconic Florida postcards and display them in the Las Olas Post Office.
Other notable Miami nods went to Wynwood’s still-growing EDM festival III Points; Miami Beach gallery ArtCenter/ South Florida, Mad Cat Theatre Company, Locust Projects and Miami City Ballet, which will present a Miami-themed version of George Balanchine’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” for the company’s 30th anniversary.