Crossing Boundaries Prize
Collaborative artists may apply for the Crossing Boundaries Prize, a financial award which provides support to unique project‐based collaborations that stretches the boundaries of their work as individuals.
The Crossing Boundaries Prize grants a shared $7,000 award to Chicago-based artists seeking to form a unique project-based collaboration that stretches the boundaries of their work as individuals to date. The Prize provides artists with the means and opportunity to expand their practice across categories, including but not limited to: creative discipline, generation, geography, identity, race, class, sexuality, ability, immigrant status, or gender. This award places an emphasis on supporting the formation and development of experimental collaborations between selected artists, with a preference given to artistic practices that:
- Examine themes relevant to Chicago’s South Side communities
- Engage issues of race and ethnicity, such as questions of discrimination, anti-racism, and institutional manifestations
- Deepen understandings of race, class, gender, and sexualities, as well as their interconnections and implications
PROGRAM GOALS
- To support the development of unique collaborations resulting in innovative new work
- To encourage artists to explore and approach their existing practice(s) from new and unexpected perspectives
- To invest in individuals at the forefront of their practice(s), whose work will impact the cultural landscape at large; to provide these artists with the support and opportunity to incubate their ideas, explore their process, and expand their practice(s)
- To creatively explore and unpack issues around race and identity
Crossing Boundaries prize winner Alberto Aguilar exhibits at the Currency Exchange Cafe.
PROGRAM SPONSORS
By implementing and supporting creative and innovative programming, the University of Chicago’s Arts + Public Life initiative inspires dialogue and fosters community partnerships based on creative endeavors that serve the diverse population of the city of Chicago with a specific concentration on the South Side. The flagship project of Arts + Public Life is the Arts Incubator in Washington Park—a mixed-use arts facility located just west of Washington Park that widens the sphere of arts and cultural activity on the mid-South Side.
The Center for the Study of Race, Politics & Culture is an interdisciplinary research center that promotes engaged scholarship, debate, teaching, and activism on issues of race and ethnicity at the level of public policy, cultural representation, and lived experience. The Center is especially interested in how ideas, images, and representations are culturally deployed and structurally enacted to shape people's daily lives, opportunities, and outcomes.
Designed as a home for the creative life of the University of Chicago campus and the City of Chicago, the Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts is a partner, resource, and catalyst for developing deeper cultural networks and richer creative projects citywide and beyond. The Logan Center is a place where boundaries dissolve and artistic work is amplified through a web of collaborative partners. More than just a building, it is an innovative hub for arts education for UChicago students, adults, and youth; a platform to showcase today’s most innovative creators across all media; and a locus for impactful and collaborative artistic innovations with partners in nearby South Side communities and across Chicago. Throughout the UChicago academic year, the Logan Center hosts a school matinee program for Chicago Public School students and Logan Center Family Saturdays for local families on the first Saturday of every month. During the summer, the Logan Center is home to numerous adult and youth programs ranging from film to storytelling to dance. The Logan Center partners with arts organizations and individual artists to perform and teach at these programs.