The Arts Foundation for Tucson and Southern Arizona awarded $750,000 by the Mellon Foundation’s Frontera Culture Fund Grant
The Arts Foundation for Tucson and Southern Arizona is honored to announce it has been selected as a recipient of the Mellon Foundation’s Frontera Culture Fund Grant, $750,000 over three years, a transformative initiative dedicated to supporting cultural organizations, artists, and scholars working along the nearly 2,000 miles U.S.-Mexico borderlands.
“The U.S.-Mexico borderlands are home to an abundance of cultures and creative traditions, yet remain a region minimally funded by arts philanthropies in the United States,” said Elizabeth Alexander, President of the Mellon Foundation.
The Frontera Culture Fund is a $25 million initiative launched by the Mellon Foundation to uplift border communities by investing in their cultural and creative ecosystems. As one of the grantees, the Arts Foundation will receive critical support to scale its operations and distribute funding to multidisciplinary artists and organizations across Southern Arizona, which includes 29 rural towns, the City of Tucson, 7 tribal nations, and 8 counties.
“This investment from the Mellon Foundation affirms the importance of arts and culture in shaping the future of the borderlands,” said Adriana Gallego, CEO of the Arts Foundation for Tucson and Southern Arizona. “The support strengthens our mission to advance artistic expression, civic participation, and equitableeconomic growth in our service region, which includes communities and Tribal Nations between the Gila River and the U.S.-Mexico Border.”
This vital support will enable the Arts Foundation to further invest in the voices, stories, and cultural expressions that define our region, and to support the livelihoods and contributions of artists who are essential to Southern Arizona’s arts and culture ecosystems.
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The Arts Foundation for Tucson and Southern Arizona is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit and funding agency with a mission to advance the artistic expression, civic participation, and equitable economic growth of our diverse communities. Through forward-thinking, accountable leadership, the Arts Foundation works to affect systemic change that fosters an accessible, diverse, inclusive, and equitable local arts community.
As the designated local arts agency, the Arts Foundation provides arts and cultural development across Southern Arizona for individual working artists, artist collectives, ensembles, and nonprofit organizations through grant programs, professional development opportunities and public art program management for the City of Tucson.
The work of the Arts Foundation is made possible through generous support from the City of Tucson, Pima County, Arizona Commission on the Arts, National Endowment for the Arts, the Mellon Foundation, the Arizona Community Foundation, and individual donors. Our service area includes all counties and native sovereign nations South of the Gila River, including 372 miles along the US-Mexico international border in the South and along the 590-mile stretch of the Gila River, which flows west from the New Mexico border to the Colorado River.
About the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation:
The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation is the nation’s largest supporter of the arts and humanities. Since 1969, the Foundation has been guided by its core belief that the humanities and arts are essential to human understanding. The Foundation believes that the arts and humanities are where we express our complex humanity, and that everyone deserves the beauty and empowerment that can be found there. Through our grants, we seek to build just communities enriched by meaning and guided by critical thinking, where ideas and imagination can thrive. Learn more at mellon.org.
