Berman Museum Awarded $245,900 from The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage
The Philip and Muriel Berman Museum of Art has been awarded a $245,900 grant from The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage to support Enrique Bostelmann: Apertures and Borderscapes. The grant includes both project funding and an additional 20% in unrestricted, general operating support.
The exhibition, scheduled to run June 18, 2024, through December 15, 2024, will bring fresh perspectives and create new scholarship surrounding the work of Bostelmann (1939-2003), a Mexican photographer—relatively unknown in the U.S.—whose work explored social issues, experimental forms, and conceptual approaches.
The Center announced its 2023 grants and fellowships on September 14, supporting cultural events and artistic work that will enliven and enrich the Philadelphia region. Its 40 awards total $9 million this year.
“The funds provided through this grant will go a long way in helping us create more visibility around Bostelmann’s work, strengthen relationships with community partners and organizations, and build the museum’s reputation as a place for groundbreaking exhibitions and original research,” Berman Museum Executive Director Lauren McCardel said. “The Berman Museum is honored and excited to receive this grant funding from The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage.”
Bostelmann fused modernist formal elegance, social documentary, conceptualism, and humor with experimental vision. His photobook America: un viaje a través de la injusticia (1970) was a groundbreaking portrayal of protest at a time of political upheaval.
Apertures and Borderscapes will unite diverse works by the artist with newly recorded interviews with his family members and artistic collaborators, as well as with art historians and curators. The material will be used to create a bilingual documentary film and will be transcribed and included in a bilingual publication accompanying the exhibition.
The exhibition represents a unique contribution to an ongoing intergenerational dialogue between artworks and artists for whom Mexico—and concepts of Mexican identity—loom large. In addition to the catalog and documentary film, a diverse suite of programs, events, and workshops produced in collaboration with partnering organizations will also be part of the exhibition.
“While we are collaborating with partners who knew Bostelmann and his work well, we are committed to bringing new curatorial vision to a selected body of Bostelmann’s work and to incorporating perspectives of interdisciplinary scholars and curators whose fields of expertise will bring novel context, perspectives, and interpretation to the material,” Berman Museum Creative Director Deborah Barkun said.
Confirmed catalog authors include Barkun; Elva Peniche Montfort (art historian and curator of Mexican photography); and Jovanna Venegas (assistant curator of contemporary Art, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art).
The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage is a multidisciplinary grant maker and hub for knowledge-sharing, funded by The Pew Charitable Trusts, dedicated to fostering a vibrant cultural community in Greater Philadelphia. The Center invests in ambitious, imaginative, and catalytic work that showcases the region’s cultural vitality and enhances public life and engages in an exchange of ideas concerning artistic and interpretive practice with a broad network of cultural practitioners and leaders.