About The Generator Fund
Support for visual arts projects that propose new directions for the creation and presentation of contemporary art.
Artist H. Boone (center) and friends in front of their work.
Background
Our region is the birthplace of electric power as we know it: Nikola Tesla used the power of the Niagara River to create the first alternating current and transmit electricity over a great distance – to Buffalo. Inspired by that historic development, the Generator Fund aims to support visual arts projects that propose new directions for the creation and presentation of contemporary art in our region.
What we Fund
As a part of the Andy Warhol Foundation for Visual Art’s Regional Regranting Program, this fund targets artists, informal non-incorporated artist collectives, and independent curators and organizers whose work often falls outside the scope of typical funding sources. The fund is meant to support artistic activity outside of the studio, to encourage collaboration, and to foster new connections and institutions among artists in Buffalo, Niagara Falls, and the suburban and rural areas that surround us. The fund is administered by the Buffalo Institute for Contemporary Art.
Types of Grants
Kinetic Grants are awards up to $2,000 to fund an artist’s production for a new project with a publicly accessible component.
Examples may include but are in no way limited to exhibitions, performances, videos or film screenings, books/zines/brochures.
Potential Grants are awards up to $10,000 and are intended to act as seed funds to sustain novel, long-term platforms for artistic expression and experimentation that foster collaboration, dialogue, and discourse in our region.
Examples may include exhibition spaces (from formal to informal; your bedroom to a rented space); podcasts or radio stations; zines or forums for arts writing; collective spaces; community gardens; public lecture series. This grant is meant to fund artists in collaboration to create new platforms for presentation.
In either grant type, the Jurors are looking for proposals that:
exemplify collectivity, equity, or unexpected collaboration;
which nurture and sustain our creative ecosystem;
and/or represent a distinctive or new approach to the visual arts or culture in the region.
Over time, the fund aims to increase artistic dynamism and empower artists in our community to think beyond the entrenched systems in our art world.
2024 Jury
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Njeri Rutherford
Njeri Rutherford is an arts administrator, entrepreneur, and dance artist from Detroit, MI. After graduating from Johnson C. Smith University with a B.A. in Communication Arts and Dance, Njeri moved to New York City where she worked for many arts organizations including Lar Lubovitch Dance Company, Brooklyn Arts Exchange, Movement Research, and Dance/NYC among others. She danced professionally for Davalois Fearon Dance where she ultimately served as both Development Manager and dance artist. In April 2020 at the height of the global pandemic Njeri founded The Barre, an artist services company that caters to the administrative and performative needs of BIPOC artists. In April 2023 Njeri graduated from the University of Michigan’s School of Music Theatre & Dance with her Masters in Dance and certificates in World Performance Studies and Arts Entrepreneurship and Leadership. She is the program manager over events and grantmaking at CultureSource where she continues in her mission of serving artists in tangible ways.
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Jenine Marsh
Jenine Marsh (b. 1984, Calgary AB, works in Toronto ON) is an artist who uses sculpture and installation to explore illicit and intimate responses to the shared conditions of end-stage capitalism. Marsh’s work has been exhibited at Morris and Helen Belkin Gallery, Vancouver (2024); Prairie, Chicago (2024); Ashley, Berlin (2024); Cooper Cole, Toronto (2023); Joe Project, Montreal (2023), Gianni Manhattan, Vienna (2023); Union Pacific, London (2023); Night Gallery, Los Angeles (2022); Essex Flowers, New York (2020); Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2019), Franz Kaka, Toronto (2019); and Lulu, Mexico City (2015). Marsh lives and works in Toronto, Canada.
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Ryan Arthurs
Ryan Arthurs is a visual artist and the founder of Rivalry Projects, a commercial art gallery and arts production space located in Buffalo, NY. Founded in 2021, Rivalry exhibits emerging, mid-career, and underrepresented artists working in all media, with an emphasis on unique approaches to materiality, non-traditional photo practices, and queer voices.
He received his M.F.A. in Photography from Massachusetts College of Art and Design and holds a B.F.A. in Studio Art from Carleton College. His work has been exhibited at The Buffalo Institute for Contemporary Art (Buffalo, NY), Radial Survey, Vol. II at Silver Eye Center for Photography (Pittsburgh, PA), The National: Best Contemporary Photography at the Fort Wayne Museum of Art, Indiana. His solo exhibitions credits include Carleton College (Northfield, MN) and Room 68 (Provincetown, MA). His work was selected by The Magenta Foundation Flash Forward Top 100 in 2018. In 2017 he was shortlisted for the Oseroff Memorial Purchase Prize administered by CEPA Gallery, and in 2015 was nominated for the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Artist Award. He has participated in residencies at the Anderson Ranch Arts Center in Snowmass Village, Colorado and The Bothy Project, Isle of Eigg in Scotland. Ryan was a visiting professor at Carleton College, and was a photography teaching assistant at Harvard University.
Program Sponsors
The Buffalo Institute for Contemporary Art
The Buffalo Institute for Contemporary Art (BICA) is an art and education project for Buffalo founded by Nando Alvarez-Perez and Emily Ebba Reynolds. Through innovative exhibitions, cross-disciplinary skills-based programming, and arts ecology development, BICA works with artists and creatives to sustain communities through focused, practical engagements with contemporary art. Learn more at thebica.org.
The Andy warhol foundation for the visual arts
Established in 1987 in accordance with Andy Warhol’s will, the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts’ mission is the advancement of the visual arts. The primary focus of its grant making activity is to support the creation, presentation, and documentation of contemporary visual art, particularly work that is experimental, under-recognized, or challenging in nature.
The foundation’s Regional Regranting Program, launched in 2007, aims to support vibrant, under-the-radar artistic activity by partnering with leading cultural institutions in communities across the country. The program allows the Warhol Foundation to reach the sizable population of informal, non-incorporated artist collectives and to support their alternative gathering spaces, publications, websites, events and other projects.