Big Money

Prestigious $100,000 grant bestowed upon premier San Antonio art museum

SAMA received $100,000 to support a new exhibition.

San Antonio Museum of Art is on the receiving end of a massive grant, an unexpected windfall during a period of great economic uncertainty.

The National Endowment for the Humanities announced the recipients of its latest round of grants on July 27, bestowing $30 million in funds to 238 humanities projects across the nation. SAMA, which is counted among the city's — and state's — premier art museums, was awarded $100,000.

SAMA was awarded an NEH grant in the Public Humanities Projects Category for Exhibitions: Implementation, the goal of which is to "help support museum exhibitions, discussion programs, and interpretations of historic places that bring the ideas and insights of the humanities to life for general audiences." Only 17 other U.S. institutions received grants in this area.

The museum will use the $100,000 grant to produce its upcoming fall 2021 exhibition tentatively entitled, Art, Nature, and Myth in Ancient Rome. In its final notification to Congress, NEH describes the show as a temporary exhibition "about landscape imagery in Roman art from the late Republic and early Empire."

"The Museum is known for its classical collection [of] Greek and Roman sculpture, and this exhibition will introduce the public to the beginnings of landscape painting in Europe, as well as to myths and legends that grew from the spirituality and imagination of ancient Roman culture," said Emily Sano, SAMA's co-interim director and senior advisor for Asian art, in a statement to CultureMap.

"SAMA is grateful for the funding support of the National Endowment which will help realize this project during an international pandemic when all museums are suffering from losses in attendance and income."

Along with SAMA, one another local organization received an NEH grant. Our Lady of the Lake University was given $9,915 for the school's Special Collections on the Spanish Colonial and Mexican American Heritage of San Antonio and Texas. According to the congressional notification, the university will use the funds for "a preservation assessment and workshop on best practices for the care and handling of rare books, archival materials, and digitized special collections."

In total, nine Texas institutions received funding, totaling $1,495,719. The remaining funds largely went to universities, including the University of Texas at Austin, University of Texas at El Paso, the University of Houston, and Baylor University.

“These challenging times underscore how important the humanities are to making American culture and world history relatable across generations,” said NEH chairman Jon Parrish Peede in a release. “NEH is proud to award hundreds of grants to keep our nation’s scholars, students, teachers, and citizens moving forward in pursuit of new knowledge and understanding.”

museums

SPARE ART

North San Antonio gets crafty with new creative supplies shop

Photo by Ismael Rodriguez.

Local nonprofit Spare Parts recently opened its brick-and-mortar center for creative reuse.

One local nonprofit organization has spent years getting environmental accountability and community education down to a fine art. And now it’s getting crafty with a new brick-and-mortar shop in North San Antonio aimed to help locals to go green.

Spare Parts was founded in 2010 by executive director and longtime arts educator Mary Elizabeth Cantú to provide a creative spark for area students and schools lacking arts funding and resources. Through a variety of educational programs, public art exhibitions, events, and the organization’s traveling Mini Art Museum, Spare Parts has enlightened thousands of students and San Antonians, all while fostering reuse practices and sustainability, a key tenet of the nonprofit.

Spare Parts’ latest endeavor is another artistic triumph. Its new center for creative reuse, located at 13451 Wetmore Rd., is nothing less than a crafter’s delight. The shop features an impressive array of “pre-loved” and price-reduced artsy merchandise — from paint supplies and paper crafts to sewing items, beading and jewelry, school and office supplies, vintage gadgets, and crafting kits — all of which has been rescued from area landfills.

Cantú notes that proceeds from the new Spare Parts’ shop will enable the organization to further increase creative and educational experiences for San Antonio students and families. But even more so, she hopes the shop will help locals embrace the concept that one person’s trash can be another’s artistic treasure.

“There really isn’t any more room in the world for this stuff. Buying pre-loved at places like Spare Parts or other stores is a way to reduce the amount of things [people] feel that they need,” Cantú said in a recent interview with the San Antonio Sentinel. “We’re challenging people to rethink things around them, buy pre-loved, and find a way to be creative in their lives.”

In the time of COVID-19, however, getting the creative juices flowing isn’t as simple as popping into the Spare Parts shop. Though the center for creative reuse is open, the store is currently offering only weekend curbside pickup of items ordered through its website. But crafters shouldn’t despair, as Spare Parts is offering private in-person shopping experiences in the new year, with the first planned for January 16 and 17.

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