New film festival among arts programs supported by Greater Milwaukee Foundation’s Mary L. Nohl Fund

Milwaukee, WI – June 30, 2014 – With support from the Greater Milwaukee Foundation’s Mary L. Nohl Fund, Milwaukee will soon have its own Muslim Film Festival.

The $15,000 grant to the Milwaukee Muslim Women’s Coalition, $10,000 from the Nohl Fund and an additional $5,000 from the Foundation’s William D. Vogel Fund, will help the group launch the festival in 2015.

The coalition has co-presented a number of films in past years, but this will be the first such festival of its kind in Milwaukee. The inaugural festival is expected to include five films, and a number of the filmmakers and artists will be available for discussions and presentations during the festival’s run.

The Foundation awarded a total of $300,000 to 18 visual arts programs during its second quarter from the Nohl Fund and other Foundation funds. Additional grants include:

The Bradley Family Foundation: $125,000 in support of the Mary L. Nohl Fund Individual Artists Fellowship Program, which recognizes visual artists who are making or will make significant contributions to their fields and who promote the arts in the greater Milwaukee area. The annual program provides fellowships of $15,000 each to established artists and $5,000 each to emerging artists. The fellowship program also provides support through its Suitcase Export Fund to help local artists with costs associated with exhibiting their work outside of the four-county area.

The Friendship Circle: $20,000 in support from the Nohl Fund and the Children’s Fund to expand its creative enrichment programming and create an outdoor sculpture in conjunction with Milwaukee-based artist Marina Lee and the children and adults with special needs and their families whom the agency serves.

Woodland Pattern Center: $12,000 toward the launch of a series of artist residencies that will feature three women – Mei Mei Berssenbrugge, Cecelia Vicuna and Susan King – who have played a significant role in the agency over its 35-year history.

On the Commons: $12,000 to support its Milwaukee Water Commons artist-in-residency project, led by Melanie Ariens, in which she will offer art-making workshops within six Milwaukee neighborhoods.

School Factory: $12,000 for the Lily Yeh Event Series, a joint artist-in-residency project with beintween and Philadelphia-based artist Lily Yeh. The weeklong summer residency will take place around the ARTery, a park connecting the Harambee and Riverwest neighborhoods, in the first phase of a two-part project with Yeh.

Carroll University: $10,000 to cover expenses related to creation and installation of a public art sculpture on campus. The selected artist will come to campus in 2015 and work with precollege students, high school students from Waukesha, the area’s arts community and the general public.

CORE/El Centro: $10,000 toward creation of a three-part community healing mural project, in conjunction with artists from the agency and STITCH, an intergenerational movement of artists and community members, which will be featured on the interior, exterior and rooftop of the Clock Shadow Building in Milwaukee’s Walker’s Point neighborhood.

Interfaith Older Adult Programs: $10,000 to expand the Lifetime Art Competition, a juried traveling exhibition of art created by older adults from throughout southeastern Wisconsin that will run from September 2014 through September 2015.

Know Thyself: $10,000 in support of a program called Immigrant Voices that will work with about 80 students from Milwaukee High School of the Arts, Reagan High School and Pulaski High School. Led by photographer Paul Calhoun, the resulting project will include photography, digital media, interviews, writing and murals created by the participating students.

Milwaukee Art Museum: $10,000 to support the summer component of its teen internship program, ArtXpress, which will draw inspiration from the “Kandinsky: A retrospective” exhibition. Teens will create a mural that will be displayed on a Milwaukee County bus for eight to 12 months.

Milwaukee Artist Resource Network: $10,000 in support of MARNsalons, the organization’s professional development and exhibition series, which connects local visual artists with visiting national and international art professionals.

Milwaukee Public Theatre: $10,000 for production support for the second year of Milwaukee Latino Carnaval, a project that includes community art-making sessions and culminates with a festival and parade on the weekend of July 24-26 along National Avenue in Milwaukee.

Museum of Wisconsin Art: $10,000 to expand its curriculum-based Wisconsin History and Visual Arts school tour program, which introduces fourth-grade students from Milwaukee Public Schools and the West Bend and Slinger school districts to MOWA’s permanent collection and special exhibitions, as well as the legacy of artist Mary Nohl.

Nonprofit Center of Milwaukee: $10,000 to expand the reach of Artists Working with Milwaukee’s Homeless, a community-based artist residency program that brings art programming to women and children in area homeless shelters. The grant will help expand the population served to include men and, specifically, veterans.

First Stage Children’s Theater: $8,000 to expand an educational partnership with the Milwaukee Art Museum that it began in 2013. The collaborative programming will feature multidisciplinary educational events involving visual art and theater that will be inspired by the MAM exhibitions, “Of Heaven and Earth” and “Inspiring Beauty: 50 Years of Ebony Fashion Fair.”

Casa Romero Renewal Center: $7,500 to support the second year of an after-school and summer art club program for middle school Latina girls, which serves as a teacher training opportunity for University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee students enrolled in the Community Arts Program.

Sharon Lynne Wilson Center for the Arts: $7,500 to expand its scholarship program for low-income children to attend its 2014 summer arts camp: The Art of Nature.

HeartLove Place: $4,000 to support an eight-week summer art program for neighborhood youth led by Milwaukee artists and Harambee residents, Reynaldo Hernandez and Tia Chianti Richardson.

About the Mary L. Nohl Fund

The Mary L. Nohl Fund was created in 1995 to support local visual arts and arts education programs. Mary L. Nohl, the renowned local artist who died in 2001, enlarged her fund with a $9.2 million bequest, one of the largest individual gifts in the Greater Milwaukee Foundation’s history. Since 2001, the fund has made grants of $6.3 million in support of visual arts and arts education in the metropolitan area.

About the Greater Milwaukee Foundation

The Greater Milwaukee Foundation is a family of more than 1,200 individual charitable funds, each created by donors to serve the local charitable causes of their choice. Grants from these funds serve people throughout Milwaukee, Waukesha, Ozaukee and Washington counties. Started in 1915, the Foundation is one of the oldest and largest community foundations in the world.

NOTE: This press release was submitted to Urban Milwaukee and was not written by an Urban Milwaukee writer. While it is believed to be reliable, Urban Milwaukee does not guarantee its accuracy or completeness.

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