Creative NZ grants announced

CNZ's second round of funding for the 2006/07 years has been announced. 245 grants totalling more than $3.9 million have been awarded; nearly $13 million was requested from 723 applications.

The visual arts grants include:

• William Hsu: to participate in the 14th annual Stazione di Topolo in Italy - $5,940
• Natural Selection and Daniel Arps: towards participating in Documenta 12 - $17,390
• Art & Industry Biennial Trust: towards the new work component of SCAPE 2008 - $82,500
• Simon Ingram: towards creating a series of telephone painting machines - $12,410
• Ryan Moore: towards a collaborative artists’ book project - $11,080
• Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki: towards commissioning three new works and an exhibition catalogue for “Mystic Truths” - $40,000
• Neuer Berliner Künstverein: towards an exhibition of contemporary New Zealand art in Berlin - $45,000
• Alice Hutchinson: towards the participation of “Aniwaniwa” in the Venice Biennale collateral exhibition - $24,000

Full list of grants - CNZ website (PDF)

p.s. From this week's International Institutue of Modern Letters newsletter (PDF)

Which acclaimed New Zealand writer has just had a book published without Creative New Zealand assistance – even though a note in the book itself thanks CNZ for their publishing grant? Publishers have their print deadlines, and funding agencies have their decision deadlines, and sometimes the twain don’t meet. Likewise, it would seem, some literary judgements.

State art funding = mediocrity?

In an interesting post on Artworld Salon, András Szántó poses the question:

"Why is it that America’s sink-or-swim attitude toward arts support keeps producing world-renowned stars, while lavish state funding in Europe seems to achieve the opposite?"

Szántó is tackling the situation in Norway, but what he says resonates for New Zealand:

"The problem is that government programs don’t seem to do too well in nurturing the kind of artistic reputations that merit recognition abroad. Access to free training and living subsidies is a wonderful privilege. Enterprising artists can even take advantage of government travel grants. But in Norway – as in other European nations that spend generously on the arts – these forms of support have, by and large, failed to translate into international approval.

Let me suggest that this might be a perfect mission to embrace by private philanthropy, a phenomenon that is finally emerging in full force in Norway."

Szántó argues that private supporters and foundations can achieve things that government funding, hampered by politics and policies, cannot. His post is particularly when you put it against the Creative New Zealand Draft Strategic Plan.