From the desk of www.SantaFeHospitalityGroup.com
Here in the high desert of Santa Fe - access to exciting news in international communities is pretty much limited to personal research and is generally topic-specific information.
When my sister sent me an article that appeared in the Wall Street Journal digital edition regarding ARTPRIZE - a "provocative 16 day art competition in the unlikely community of Grand Rapids, Michigan", I paid attention. Mainly because she is very smart, involved in the tourism industry in Western Michigan, and she felt that sharing the article was worth our time and energy.
She was right.
ARTPRIZE is the brain child of a fellow named Rick DeVos. That's the same DeVos family where granddaddy co-founded Amway and his uncle founded Blackwater - pretty diverse businesses under a politically conservative, philanthropic umbrella.
Over the past many years, the DeVos' have contributed millions upon millions of dollars to the Grand Rapids community; their philanthropy is a wonderful thing and has kept Grand Rapids on the cutting edge in many arenas - quietly creating new medical schools - museums - public venues to attract travelers to a grand Rapids slice of life.
ARTPRIZE took the quiet out of Grand Rapids. It morphed from son/grandson Rick's desire to create an event that stimulates interest in art on a broad scale (international), invites public participation (voting on "Best") and drives greatly needed tourism traffic to the area - while stimulating economically depressed local business in a meaningful way. Along the art journey -visitors can experience the terrific little city of Grand Rapids, Michigan (200,000 +/-) and make plans to return again and again.
To accomplish this multi-faceted goal - Rick and his team came up with a plan. Offer the highest prize in the world - $250,000 - to the winner of the competition.
Year one - 2009 - they allowed themselves only six months to make the event happen - they attracted 1,262 artists from 15 countries and over 200,000 visitors to the Grand Rapids community. To compare on an international scale - Italy's Biennale in Venice - a six month event - draws about 350,000 .
Year two - events begin on September 22- October 10 in relatively little, sleepy Grand Rapids, Michigan. Art critics, major art communities, major and minor artists remain skeptical, squeamish, incredulous, scared but seem to be paying attention. This unfamiliar concept of creating broad-scaled community and cultural involvement is so far outside of many comfort zones that arts folks really don't know what to think. In general - the comments seem to focus on the quality of the art - but - since we generally acknowledge that the value of art remains in the eye and heart of the beholder... and since the size of the prize is bound to attract some very high profile artists as word gets around (Note: first year was almost exclusively promoted on a word-of-mouth basis) it will be very interesting to pay attention to the evolution.
Check it out and enjoy the ride - www.ARTPRIZE.org. It's pretty fantastic!
