Floating Museum Announces The Burroughs Residency Pilot

Via PR

(Chicago, Illinois — October 4, 2024) — Floating Museum is proud to announce The Burroughs Residency Pilot (The Burroughs), a pilot residency program that will foster innovative connections between art, community, architecture, and public institutions. In line with Floating Museum’s organizational vision of creating a “museum without walls,” The Burroughs envisions a “residency without walls,” that serves local and international creatives of color and strengthens our local and global creative communities.

To develop The Burroughs, Floating Museum will initiate a three-year pilot development phase, consisting of an asset-driven and community-engaged research & development (R&D) process and two pilot residency cohorts. The research phase will explore how a “residency without walls” might work, including how to leverage and reinforce the many cultural assets in the South Side and across Chicago. The proposed R&D will also ask how The Burroughs might respond to the growing demand to strengthen ties between creative communities and creatives of color across the globe. During this phase, an open call for residents will not be initiated.

This groundbreaking initiative is possible with the generous support of the Terra Foundation for American Art and Wagner Foundation. Floating Museum is deeply grateful to these foundation partners for their unwavering commitment to the arts and their invaluable financial contributions to this pilot. Their support has been instrumental in bringing this residency to life, ensuring that emerging and established creatives alike can thrive in an environment that nurtures creativity.

“The Burroughs offers a promising model of multivocal and collaborative ways of working locally and globally that will benefit the residents and enrich the arts ecosystem in Chicago and in the residents’ locales," said Sharon Corwin, President and CEO of the Terra Foundation for American Art. "Putting artists and thinkers from across geographies in dialogue and in community with one another is critical to developing nuanced understandings of American art and contemporary creative practice.”

“Wagner Foundation is thrilled to be supporting this visionary project to build new models for artist residency programs that recognize and amplify the assets in community as an integral part of the experience, which we see as having ripple effects across the field.” said Abigail Satinsky, Program Officer and Curator, Arts & Culture of Wagner Foundation.

"We’re beyond grateful to our supporters the Terra Foundation for American Art and Wagner Foundation for their dedication to the arts and their belief in the power of artistic expression," said Faheem Majeed, Co-Founder/Co-Director of Floating Museum. "Their support allows us to offer this unique opportunity to creatives, helping them to grow and create work that resonates with our community and beyond."

The Burroughs Residency Pilot pays homage to the late poet, printmaker, activist, and advocate Dr. Margaret T. Burroughs and is located at Dr. Burroughs' former home in the heart of Chicago’s historic Bronzeville neighborhood. The site is also where Dr. Burroughs founded the DuSable Museum of African American History–the first museum of African-American history in the world–in 1961.

For more information on The Burroughs Residency, visit: https://floatingmuseum.org/Residency

Read the full press release here