The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation is launching an initiative dubbed the Frontera Culture Fund, providing $25m to arts and community organisations along the border between the US and Mexico. The fund was created in collaboration with artists and cultural leaders in the region, which spans almost 2,000 miles and four US and six Mexican states. Funds will be dispersed over the next several years, according to Artnews, supporting artist-led projects, cultural organisations and community groups, as well as cross-border Indigenous, binational and Black cultural and advocacy networks.
“The US-Mexico borderlands are home to an abundance of cultures and creative traditions, yet remain a region minimally funded by arts philanthropies in the United States,” Elizabeth Alexander, president of the Mellon Foundation, said in a statement. “Our long-term support for the artists, culture-builders and stewards of creative expression among these communities will help amplify and sustain the profoundly varied arts and histories taking place in the borderlands.”
Of the 32 inaugural grant recipients, eight are based in Mexico. Grantees include a Chicano cultural centre and a Haitian immigration advocacy group in San Diego, Indigenous groups in Texas and Arizona, an arts festival in Tijuana, a community farm in New Mexico and an art gallery in Ciudad Juárez. Museums and universities are also among the grantees: the El Paso Museum of Art, Museum of Contemporary Art Tucson, New Mexico State University and the University of Texas at El Paso—the latter two specifically for curatorial work. The MexiCali Biennial, founded by the artists Edward Gomez and Luis G. Hernandez in 2006 as a crossborder art festival, will receive funding as well.