AT&T; Reaches Out, Touches Local Museums

The California Afro-American Museum in Exposition Park and the Long Beach Museum of Art are among 10 nationwide recipients of the first batch of grants from “AT&T; New Art/New Visions,” a fledgling corporate program that provides challenge grants for museum exhibitions of new work by living artists, especially works by women and artists of color.

The Afro-American Museum’s grant will support “John Outterbridge: Keeper of Traditions,” a 1993 solo exhibition of work by the noted artist who is also director of the Watts Towers Art Center.

The Long Beach grant supports the museum’s current exhibition, “Relocations and Revisions: The Japanese-American Internment Reconsidered,” which explores the World War II internment through the eyes of third-generation Japanese-American artists.

Other recipients are Atlanta’s High Museum of Art, which will present work by L.A. artist Mineko Grimmer and former Angeleno Alison Saar; New York’s El Museo del Barrio; the Studio Museum in Harlem; Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art; Washington’s Corcoran Gallery; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; and the Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus, Ohio.

The grants range from $30,000 to $50,000 and each museum may apply for separate acquisition grants in 1993 to purchase a work featured in the exhibitions.

OTHER HONORS: Yun-Dong Nam, currently a visiting artist at Cal State Long Beach, has received the first Korea Arts Foundation of America Award, a $10,000 prize that will be awarded annually to a Korean-American artist selected from applicants nationwide. As part of the award, Nam’s small clay objects are on view at the Korean Cultural Center Gallery on Wilshire Boulevard, through June 19.

Los Angeles’ Jill Giegerich and San Francisco-based Suzanne Lacy are among 13 recipients of the 1992 Guggenheim Fellows in Art. Other recipients are Pennsylvania’s Sharon Horvath, Idaho’s Romey Stuckart and nine New York-based artists: Walton Ford, Guy Goodwin, Barry Ledoux, Erik Levine, John Newman, Rona Pondick, Mira Schor, Drew Ellen Shiflett and Mary Ann Unger. The prestigious awards vary in amount, but average about $26,500.

DEADLINES: Applications are due June 8 for two General Services Administration commissions for public art projects for the U.S. Federal Border Stations at Calexico and Otay Mesa, Calif. The Otay Mesa commission is $65,000 and the Calexico commission is $165,000. Information: (202) 501-1785. or (415) 744-5769.