516 Arts awarded Advancing Latinx Art in Museums grant

516 Arts is the recipient of a grant from a consortium of national funders comprised of Mellon, Ford, Getty, and Terra Foundations.

The five-year grant of $500,000 is for a new initiative titled Advancing Latinx Art in Museums (ALAM).

“The initiative is intended to bolster museums and visual art organizations that have shown a commitment to engaging with Latinx art and artists,” says Suzanne Sbarge, 516 Arts executive director. “516 ARTS is honored to be among the 48 museums and visual arts organizations that were invited to apply, and among the 10 selected which span much larger institutions in major cities nationwide.”

The ALAM grant supports curating and presenting of Latinx artists, defined as creatives of Latin American or Caribbean descent who live and work in the United States. The initiative is intended to bolster museums and visual art organizations that have shown a commitment to engaging with Latinx art and artists.

Founded in 2006, 516 ARTS is a noncollecting contemporary art museum in Albuquerque, which has a strong history of putting Latinx artists and curators front and center in its programming. It is committed to making contemporary art accessible for everyone and contributing to systemic change in our field.

“The fact that our small museum was selected among much larger museums and organizations we greatly admire represents meaningful recognition of the work we have been doing for the past 17 years,” Sbarge says. “(We) focus on the intersectional nature of Latinx and Indigenous artists in our particular place and time here in New Mexico, a U.S.Mexico border state with deep Spanish and other colonial roots intermixed with even deeper Indigenous histories.”

Sbarge says the grant funds will be used for Latinx and Indigenous curating and programming 2023 through 2027.