The Atlanta Contemporary Art Center, which unveiled a major renovation as part of its 40th anniversary celebration late last year, is positioned for a rosier future after announcements Thursday of two major grants from the Metropolitan Atlanta Arts Fund.
The Contemporary received $200,000, the largest grant ever made by the Arts Fund to a single arts organization, as part of a pilot program intended to educate Atlanta's small and medium-sized arts groups on achieving better capitalization.
The luncheon's theme was “Capitalize — The Arts Count,” and it featured a keynote address on that topic by Rodney Christopher, senior fellow at the F.B. Heron Foundation. Capitalization is essentially the amassing of financial resources an organization require to fulfill its mission and sustain over time.
The Arts Fund, in its 21st year of supporting Atlanta's arts infrastructure, also announced $500,000 in general operating support grants to 13 metro arts organizations.
The Contemporary was one of three groups awarded the largest grants in that category, $60,000. Two theater companies, Dad's Garage and Kenny Leon's True Colors , also were announced at that amount.
Officially, the operating grants were quietly awarded in late 2013, but the Arts Fund chose to wait and make the news public at Thursday's lunch at the Georgia World Congress Center. The full list of awards is below this story.
Visit myajc.com on Thursday afternoon for a full report on the grants and the Arts Fund's capitalization initiative or read it in Friday's Metro section.
Arts Fund grant recipients
7 Stages, $44,500
Art Papers, $45,000
Atlanta Celebrates Photography, $30,000
Atlanta Chamber Players, $15,000
Atlanta Contemporary Art Center, $60,000
Atlanta Shakespeare Company, $45,000
Aurora Theatre, $50,000
Dad's Garage Theatre Company, $60,000
Horizon Theatre Company, $38,000
Kenny Leon's True Colors Theatre Company, $60,000
Monroe Art Guild, $5,000
Moving in the Spirit, $35,000
Out of Hand Theater, $12,500
