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Salina Art Center Receives National Endowment for the Arts Grant 

Salina, Kan. (November 3, 2019)The National Endowment for the Arts is awarding Salina Art Center a grant of $10,000 to support the Salina Biennial: Contemporary Art from the Mountain Plains Region, April 3-June14, 2020

“All Americans should have access to the arts,” said Mary Anne Carter, acting chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts. “Grants such as this one to Salina Art Center are an important part of the National Endowment for the Arts’ work to ensure people in communities both large and small across the nation have the opportunity to experience the arts.” 

The 2020 Salina Biennial: Contemporary Art from the Mountain-Plains Region runs April 3 – June 14, 2020 at the Salina Art Center, Salina, Kansas. The juried exhibition features recent work by visual artists from Kansas, Colorado, Texas, Nebraska, South Dakota, North Dakota, Montana, Wyoming, New Mexico and Oklahoma. Educational workshops, special programming and short-term artist residencies will be scheduled from the pool of selected artists with effort made to invite at a minimum one artist from each state to participate in a meaningful way.

“We are excited to have support from the NEA which will allow us to continue to share the vibrant arts culture thriving in the Mountain-Plains states,” Misty Serene, director of institutional advancement at Salina Art Center. “The first Art Center juried regional exhibition began in 1979 and continued as an annual exhibition until ending in 2003.  Reviving the the format in 2018 allowed us to celebrate artists living and working far from the coasts, and was our most successful exhibition of the season. 

Ksenya Gurshtein has been selected to juror the Biennial exhibition. Gurshtein is the Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Ulrich Museum of Art at Wichita State University. Prior to coming to the Ulrich, she held curatorial positions at the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. The 2020 Salina Biennial call for artists was released in mid-September. Eligibility for the exhibition is open to all visual artists working in the Mountain-Plains region (Colorado, Kansas, Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Texas, and Wyoming). Work completed in 2018 or 2019, in any medium, is eligible for consideration. Learn more at www.salinaartcenter.org

Established by Congress in 1965, the National Endowment for the Arts is the independent federal agency whose funding and support gives Americans the opportunity to participate in the arts, exercise their imaginations, and develop their creative capacities. Through partnerships with state arts agencies, local leaders, other federal agencies, and the philanthropic sector, the Arts Endowment supports arts learning, affirms and celebrates America’s rich and diverse cultural heritage, and extends its work to promote equal access to the arts in every community across America. Visit arts.gov to learn more.

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Founded in 1978, the Salina Art Center is a 501(c)3 creating exchanges among art, artists, and audiences that reveal life. Accredited by the American Alliance of Museums, the Art Center's galleries, Art Center Cinema, and Warehouse are located in the heart of downtown Salina, KS. Learn more online at www.salinaartcenter.org. The Salina Art Center’s exhibitions and programs are funded by Art Center donors and members, the Salina Arts & Humanities Grants Program, and the City of Salina.