Chicago’s Cultural Treasures is focused on strengthening, growing, and preserving organizations whose mission is to enable the creation, preservation, and dissemination of art stemming from BIPOC traditions, leadership, and culture – for short, we’ll refer to them as “BIPOC arts organizations.”
We hope to bolster the long-term financial resilience and sustainability of BIPOC arts organizations through a combination of both critical general operating support, as well as capacity building and technical assistance that will be co-created with the arts community to ensure it meets their needs. This four-year initiative is not designed to provide “emergency funding,” nor is it limited to those organizations in financial distress.
We recognize that many BIPOC arts organizations are facing unprecedented challenges to their decades of leadership and resiliency right now, and that the current crises are compounding historic inequities they have faced. The funders backing this initiative – John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, Joyce Foundation, Polk Bros. Foundation, Terra Foundation for American Art, and Walder Foundation – hope to achieve greater equity in funding art that reflects the full diversity of American culture.
As of June 2021, a total of $24.75 million has been committed to Chicago’s Cultural Treasures, which includes:
- $5 million in seed funding provided by the Ford Foundation as part of it’s America’s Cultural Treasures announcement in September 2020.
- $11.75 million from the Chicago-based funding team
- $8 million from philanthropist MacKenzie Scott
