July Member Spotlight on Emily Hall Tremaine Foundation
In July, GIA's photo banner features exhibitions and programs sponsored by the Emily Hall Tremaine Foundation. Founded in 1987 by Emily Hall Tremaine, the New Haven-based family foundation makes grants to support art, learning disabilities, and the environment, with a primary emphasis on education. The foundation's two signature arts awards are the Emily Hall Tremaine Exhibition Award, through which the foundation supports curatorial excellence in the presentation of contemporary visual art, and Marketplace Empowerment for Artists, a program supporting professional development training for visual artists.
Below, in their own words, the Tremaine staff reflects on the first decade of the Marketplace Empowerment program.
Emily Hall Tremaine Foundation | The MEA Program at Ten Years
The Emily Hall Tremaine Foundation recognizes that for visual artists to be successful in the marketplace, they need certain strategic visioning and planning skills in addition to artistic talent. Ten years ago the Foundation’s Marketplace Empowerment for Artists (MEA) program was developed to empower visual artists with the tools, skills, and training to help them succeed professionally without being solely reliant on patrons, grants, or federal funding. The MEA Program is designed to reach artists in their lives when they are most receptive to this information, usually during their formal academic training (e.g. Masters of Fine Arts programs), but also outside of academia when they encounter issues in their professional practices that they are unable to handle.
The Foundation is in the process of reflecting back on ten years of funding and considering how it may evolve in the future. Previous commissioned studies of MEA focused on the effectiveness of the program and its potential future directions. Now the Foundation is looking to expand this understanding with a more comprehensive portrait of MEA’s influence on the artists themselves. The overall approach to the assessment is to compare outcomes for artists who are alumni of MEA against the desired outcomes of the program. Because artists are influenced by many factors in their careers, most beyond the scope of MEA, it will not be possible to define MEA as the cause of their success (or lack thereof). However, the assessment can describe the characteristics of MEA alumni’s careers and their opinions about the impact of MEA training. Moreover, the opinions of artists, grantees, trainers, and staff will be very useful in identifying potential improvements to MEA. Currently in the beta testing stage, the Foundation plans to have all MEA organizations and universities nationwide integrating this tool into their program by 2013.
Photo: Springboard for the Arts’ workshops for artists; Marketplace Empowerment for Artists grantee Springboard for the Arts. Photo: Springboard for the Arts.