FY2026 CT Art Grants Mystery Money

 

I started researching CT Office of the Arts administration of Art grants and awards. I began by looking at FY26 Art Grant Recipients that can be found at: https://portal.ct.gov/decdartsportal/-/media/decd/arts_culture/supporting-arts/fy26-sap-grants.pdf?rev=d28740ff103e457d962eb18b9080adf0&hash=29193B075BDA2056D73E9B7D58F83AC0

The heading claims that $950,000 has been awarded to 233 recipients.

I decided to categorize how much each of the eight counties in CT received to see if there was a pattern. In doing so, based strictly on the information documented on the spreadsheet, I could only locate $750,642 worth of grants – roughly a $200,000 shortfall.

If one were to assume each of the eight counties got an equal share of that $750k, the percentage would be 12% or approx. $94K/county.

Here’s how it actually breaks out based on the ~$750K grand total:

Litchfield got 8%

Fairfield got 44%

Tolland got 0.8%

Windham got 1.7%

New Haven got 25.5%

Hartford got 26.6%

Middlesex got 6%

New London got 10%

So.

What happened to the missing $200K?
Why are Eastern CT taxpayers subsidizing wealthy counties who can well afford to pay for their own programs while counties whose cultural needs are many are ignored. If artists are looking for an erased and marginalized group to whine about look no further than Tolland and Windham counties.

see: https://artscrub.blogspot.com/2026/03/chro-ct-office-of-arts-complaint.html

CHRO CT Office of the Arts Complaint

 

Today (Feb 16, 2026)  I submitted the following complaint to CHRO;

"Upon researching the administration of Public Arts funded by the CT 1% for Art program, I found evidence of severe mismanagement of equal opportunity to fair opportunity to be chosen to represent CT art. The protected class involves wealthy or ingrown regions vs less wealthy communities. It is also an issue of urban vs suburban and rural communities.

Three recent Public Arts selections; the Litchfield Courthouse, The SCSU Business school,, and the Elihu Burritt Library expansion provide the cold hard evidence.

In all three cases, CT Arts was used to purchase art from very specific areas; Fairfield county (New Haven) and Western CT (wealthy Litchfield towns).

All CT artists pay CT taxes. I'm 74 years old, grew up in New Britain and I'm very familiar with the many artists in and around New Britain, West Hartford, Hartford, and so on. I am also familiar with North Eastern CT; Putnam, Woodstock, Willimantic, Storrs, and so on. With the exception of one art teacher in Manchester CT, not one artist from Central or Eastern CT had a piece purchased through the 1% for Art program.

There are numerous issues in play.

The "calls for art" are fairly ambiguous and may cap the number of candidate entries. But the selecting process may move the goalposts (see the Elihu Burritt selection process).

There is also no transparency as to how much 1% is nor where that money is actually spent (it should be going to buying art from artists). It's not an administrative slush fund.

The art juror needs to be culturally qualified. CT is investing heavily in Giclee prints - art's most dubious medium that is usually not accepted at local art shows - expensive prints. At Elihu Burritt a piece claiming an Exit 29 in New Britain was chosen. There is no such exit in New Britain. Another piece called Neptune Bay was selected based on "physics" criteria. Neptune Bay is not on the planet Neptune, it's in Florida. Many of the selected works have nothing to do with art or even CT - this program is shamefully in need of an audit and reform.

Some artists selected have many more works purchased than could have been entered for evaluation (ok, good for them but shockingly indifferent to encouraging a broader representation of CT artists.

This complaint is a class and regional complaint. The CHRO needs to step in and ensure more regional, intellectual, and artistic integrity to an unaccountable, runaway State program."

This is scheduled for intake in late April.

Ruminations on Art Exhibit Viewer's Primer

 

Ruminations on Art

[An inquiry into the philosophy of Fine Art
and where it all comes from- 2026]

This exhibition illustrates the development of a visual philosophy unique to the existing practice and belief system commonly taught, exercised , and advocated as artistic gospel by the contemporary artistic status quo.

While this is a co-incidental and largely oblivious contextual reality, anyone can enjoy the show regardless. For those who enjoy the intent, detail, contextual basis, and co-incidentals of what the art is, the following supplement is intended to provide clarity and a teaser of more complex understanding through curiosity for more.

A primer on what the words mean or refer to:

Art Categories and sub categories:

Contemporary Art – refers to mainstream art and ideas that are given commercial and institutional credibility usually conferred to living artists

Modern Art – refers to a historical span of art production that started in the late 1800’s
and, in some art historian and critics opinion, continues in one form or another, to this very day

MetaModern Art – Contemporary Art that is created with the intent of answering a historical question or proposition that has been previously answered. MetaModern art is not an act of appropriation but an act of re-imagining a unique solution to the problem that can re-purpose familiar styles, techniques, or artifacts in fair use fashion (you don’t have to reinvent the studio practice or obvious intellectual artifacts).

Modern Day Art – refers to Contemporary Art that is neither political nor subliminally advocating political or identity politics as a defining characteristic of the work

PostModern (PoMo) [Visual] Art – refers to a historical span of art production that arguably started by the mid-1950’s and continues to today. It is most recognizable (but not exclusively defined) by the appropriation of numerous historically recognizable art and design styles that maintain their distinctive ancestry and are uniquely fused into pastiche compositions.

Propositional Zenthetics – candidate art that requires the viewer to alter their expectations of the question, “What is art?”. The first and foremost expectation of mainstream art is that what you see is the criteria by which you decide to evaluate it’s worth. Instead, Zenthetics insists that its art practice gives preference to the question, “What do all my senses and intellect have to contribute to may understanding of this work not withstanding my appreciation of how it ‘looks’?”

Fair warning.

“The map is not the territory”

- Alfred Korzybski

“The label is not the thing”

- Gregory Bateson

How to read my art labels:

TypeOfArt.Medium.CategoryOfFineArt Title of the artwork

TypeOfArt – any one of the set of labels referring to the conceptual bucket of recognized art objects. This generically includes ‘Painting’, ‘Sculpture’, ‘Assemblage’, ‘Collage’, and
so on

Medium – usually refers to the material used to create the work or the material upon which the work is created. For example, ‘Oil’, ‘Acrylic’, ‘MixedMedia’, and so on.

Category – Many of the categories involving my art are recent forks of MetaModern research projects. The artwork is often a prototype example of what is possible when an artist richly experiments with modifying the range of possibilities available in answering historically important artistic questions.
For example, “what is printmaking?”, “what is artistic photography”, and “is the homonyn of ‘language’ as used in art and actually useful form of communication?” are experiments explored in this exhibition.

Title – I do not tell the viewer what to see. On occasion, I document the origin of what was seen.
I can consider the title to be another characteristic of the artistic whole. These usually take the form of an assemblage in which the lablel (a poem or microFiction story) is bundled with the physical object to create the aggregate piece.

On other occasions, the title is a psychological nudge or hint to look harder.

The Main Hall (left to Right):

The Coffee Space:

Painting.Acrylic.DisassociativeImpressionism Snapshot of the Void on Any Given Evening

An experiment in Impressionism that uses additive, acrylic skin artifacts to the painting surface. Anyone who has read Jack Kerouac knows all about the void.

The Middle Hall Space:

Painting.Acrylic.ImprovisationalAbEx Gate of Eternal Return

An experiment in forking the Abstract Expressionist trajectory from action painting to improvisational impulse. Blame Miles Davis.

Painting.Acrylic.PostPostPainterlyImprovisation #16

A further exploration of the problem set originally explored by the “PostPainterly” cohort of New York and Washington painters working with stained canvases and vacant titles.

Painting.Acrylic.AbExWithoutACause CoddieWomple 1

Sorry/Not Sorry. Extending AbEx practice with an emphasis on a linear intervention of color
field ground.

The Far Hall Space:

P.A.Biomorphic,GesturalAbstraction.Surrealism Neither Here Nor There

A compound reimagination of what Surrealism might look like through the eyes of a German Expressionist fanboy.

Painting.Acrylic.PropositionalZenthetics Pavlov’s Aesthetics

Zenthetics is a minimalization of Aesthetic [beauty-based] art appreciation. But those dogs
keep barking.

Painting.Acrylic.xSurrealism Test Bed

An application of the Greek optical illusion of entasis to a back-to-basics color field-ish tease.

Painting.Acrylic. PropositionalZenthetics Usurping Humanity

Another deconstruction and reconstruction of the ruins of Contemporary Art practice.

Painting.Acrylic. PropositionalZenthetics Psychic Arms Race

Subconscious, unintentionally coded paint on canvas. Somebody must recognise it.

The Gym Hall Space:

Painting.Acrylic.xSurrealism The Mask Reveals What Is Inside

More entasis. Nobody is fooled.

Painting.Acrylic.Cosmograph Head Magic

A speculative cosmograph of our seemingly eternal human predicament.

Painting.Acrylic.xSurrealism Late Night Visitors

A raw, examination of a surrealist dream state through the eyes of one haunted.

Painting.Acrylic.PrimordialAbEx Memories Leave Memories Behind

Do butterflies have the memory of the caterpillar? An a priori action without motion.

Painting.Acrylic.ReadyMyth Face of Dionysus

ReadyMyths are physical artifacts that reference common myths (in this case the season of spring).
Readymyths are intellectual kissing cousins to ReadyMades.

Painting.Acrylic.AntiAbstraction Thirteen Paintings That Can’t Stop Tears

Abstraction obstructed by abstraction and grief.

The Entry Showcase:

Top Shelf:

Painting.Acrylic.Zenthetics The Four Seasons

Painting.Acrylic.Landscapes Nebraska and others

Memory exercises.

Middle Shelf:

Assemblage NeckTie

Print.Acrylic.SnapPrint 1 - 4

“What is a print?” In this case, the impression of an inked mousetrap.

Physical Photography.HandCut Visions of Buddha #1

“What is a print?” In this case, the impression of an inked mousetrap.

Manuport.CorrespondenceArt Minor Chaos in the Customs System

A manuport sent to be exhibited in the first International Festival of Manuports at the Kohta Gallery in Helsinki, Finland. Sent during Covid, Finnish customs and a new EU law “caused chaos” and this, one of many, entries were returned to sender.

The manuport entry is a component of the Ashford stone sculpture field on Zaicek Rd.

Lower Shelf:

Drawings.TheaterGoers.HandToGod various

TheaterWorks in Hartford staged a play, Hand to God, that was based on puppetry. As was my wont I drew audience members before and during intermissions of all shows. In this case, I exaggerated the images to imitate puppet likeneses.

Sculpture.Improvisational Cosmic Crapshoot #1

Painting.Acrylic.VisualLeetspeak 1-4

The Exit Showcase:

Top Rail:

Sculpture.Knotted 1 - 4

Left Wall, top to bottom:

Assemblage.MixedMedia.Antiscape Train of Thought

Painting.Acrylic.Cosmograph Betelguese Farewell

Painting.Acrylic.SpectacularMinimalism POMO Like We Did Last Summer

Right Wall, top to bottom:

SerialCompoundMonotypes Running Man series

Painting.Acrylic.Zenthetic Running Man

Lower Shelf:

Painting.Acrylic.4DAbEx Abstract Ambivalence

PhysicalPhotography.Pixel.DiscontiguousDoubleTake Lake/Ice #2

All of my Physical Photography entries were created long before Banksy’s use of a shredding device.

PhysicalDrawing.Pastel.4DAbEx Representational Ambivalence #1

PhysicalPhotography.Pixel.DiscontiguousDoubleTake Lake/Ice #1

PhysicalPhotography.Pixel.Minimal.DoublePresentation Dunham Lake

PhysicalPainting.Acrylic.ReadyMyth Dancing Fool

A few words about the exhibit:

A few innovative and somewhat experimental exhibition design decisions were involved in setting
up this show.

None of the works are titled nearby the work. Anyone interested in the titles and explanations can refer to this Primer on the exhibit contents. This is intentional.

This eliminates the possibility that a title may pre-seed an idea about what is being presented. The viewer can freely make their own assessments. It also eliminates the need for distracting signage.


The second exhibition innovation involves the tight coupling of my process notes and sketches and reading material to the artwork. This too is intentional and it has MetaModern roots in lterature.

In Infinite Jest, David Foster Wallace, uses rich, autonomously narrative footnotes as complementary vignettes to the main narrative. Likewise, my contextual material is intended to test the possibility that viewers can spend more than 5 seconds grazing at art and will instead leave smarter for the deeper investment of time.

2025 Annual Survey of Sexual Discrimination in the Visual Arts

Formerly known as the Guerrilla Girl Counts

This last year I started getting bored with the predictability of the Counts so a few I ignored until the end of year and the results aren't preserved on the respective websites. I'll update if I can find more juried shows.

2025 results in 7 major juried shows:

307 pieces x 302 women

225 pieces by 222 men

58% of women's submissions accepted
42% of men's submissions accepted

"40.5% of visual artists are women and 59.5% of visual artists are men."

(see: https://www.zippia.com/visual-artist-jobs/demographics/)

The audit trail:

18 women, 18 men Blue Mtn Gallery winter juried, Glen Goldberg, juror

68 women, 41 men WHAL Ct+6

82 W          86 M    92nd Annual National Juried Hudson Valley Art

30 W           21 M    26th WAH Salon

26 W            4 M     Silvermine A-One

22 W             9 M     Faber Birren, Stamford Art Assn

61p x 56W  46p x 43M     CAFA 114th Annual Exhibition

Museum Shows 

32 W            11 M         2025 Mixmaster @ The Mattatuck

38W             23 M         2025 Nor'Easter @ NBMAA

73W             26 M         2025 Danforth Annual Juried

142 W         60 M          70% women, 30% men Totals

Grants

42 W          43 M        Pollock Krasner

05 M           M10        Joan Mitchell Foundation

Link to 2024 survey

The ALNB Artists of Color Show 2 Aftermath

In my first essay on this show I questioned the legitimacy of the conceptual basis for this show.
In the second installment I looked at the art and artists.

In this essay, let's unpack whether or not this kind of curation accomplishes what the show claims it does.

Are the Artists Underrepresented?

The best that can be said about this claim is that a few of the artists exhibiting may be new (and just starting) to the Art League of New Britain (ALNB). But many - those holding and exposing the most mature body of work are well known veterans of the Central Connecticut gallery ecosystem. They show and get accepted regularly to the shows they enter. The idea that they are "erased", "invisible", or otherwise marginalized is the by-product of the ineffective politics of the hegemony of exclusively Democratic governance. Non-white voters are conditioned to feel oppressed and they are trained, like Pavlov's Dogs,  to pull a single party lever come election time.

As a storied art gallery that is part of the Central CT Arts ecosystem, the ALNB could care less about the identity politics of anybody who pays their money, enters a show, and has anything they claim to be art that isn't a rancid fraud - You'e In! Now that may come as a huge disappointment to race baiters and hustlers who can and do make a pretty penny on selling reverse bigotry as a hot commodity. 

But the broader truth of the matter is that all Connecticut artists (tho there are exceptions in the rich New York suburbs and country hideaways) very much are poorly represented, undervalued, and systemically ignored both in exposure and grants funding. For decades and decades I've followed and documented (to the degree that I can) the obscene mistreatment of artists who pay taxes and live in Connecticut and get jack-shit representation from larger arts organizations, government funding operations, and State programs. An audit of all of these organizations is LONG overdue but they are protected by the immutable jackboot of Democratic thugs running the State.

The Art profession has been under assault for almost a half-century with agit-political groups feasting like termites at the foundations of local arts groups. These groups are weak and often imprinted with victim mentalities and sympathies that wholly distort their purpose. 

What this show illustrates is that there is no single cultural cohort of people who constitute a coherent set of historical victims, shared common aesthetic consensus, or long term commitment to sustaining and nurturing a more so-called "equitable" arts scene.

This is the first show I have ever attended at the ALNB that has empty wall space. Wall space is everything to artists. Wasting it is an organizational sin. But it also exposes the weakness of the premise of the show's pretense. The color of any artist's skin has nothing to do with the stuff in the gallery or with the idea that there is a volume of work that is being suppressed.

Is There a Hidden Culture Out There?

Well, there may be but does that culture have an artistic veracity to its existence? Galleries like the ALNB are better equipped to organize art shows that might split up the multiple gallery spaces. Why not dedicate a gallery to modern American Urban art regardless of who contributes work? Why not one dedicated to suburbia? Or the Polish influence - Italian - Puerto Rican, and so on?

The idea that artists should be divided by bigotry based criteria is a disservice to all of us. If there is a demographic that represents who we are its called "Talented Individuals". And the individuals who show up are the only ones that matter because the rest of the world doesn't give a shitt about any of us.

Does the Show Succeed

Both of these shows have had some really fine art exhibited and have been well judged respectively.

Both have failed in their socio-political promises. While they do filter by skin color, skin color is a lousy way to describe the Connecticut Arts scene or any Arts scene for that matter. Most of the artists in these shows were far more vanilla American citizens than representatives of the their neighborhood vibe. Artists don't roll that way - well, some do but the by-product is more propaganda than art.

The answer to improving participation in all art shows is *Participate MORE* - that's it. Show up, be there.

And if you have a victim narrative - talk about it. But if you do don't be surprised if the person next to you doesn't say, "Hold my glass of wine." and bends your ear with their own. 

The ALNB Artists of Color Show 2 Art Critique

 I visited the Artists of Color Show II today. I commented on the show's existence in an earlier post.

This is a wildly eclectic show and a bit of a mixed bag in terms of quality. Add to this the fact that a few of these artists are friends or well known peers. I will do my best to present an objective set of observations.

Darryl Oates, one of this country's finest portrait artists, judged the show and the task was a difficult one. But the unintended consequence of judging leaves the show short any work he might have contributed and that's a shame.

The show featured many portraits or pictures of individuals or advocacy poster designs. All of the prize winning pieces were portraits of one kind or another.

First prize was awarded to a portrait by Stanwyck Cromwell that didn't click for me - an abstract hodgepodge of colorful silhouettes that was pleasant enough with nothing to say and nowhere to go. On the other hand, his other entry, Give Peace a Chance, I thought was far more artistically interesting because of its aesthetic coupling to artistic practice like Rauschenberg's Combine objects. 

The Cromwell pieces expose a chronic weakness with all messaging or virtue signaling art and that is that the juvenile imagery and utopian lecturing can bring even well crafted and artistically sound art objects into the realm of American Kitsch which is its own ocean of commercially successful but intellectually questionable material.

Many other artists in the show had similar pieces that broke out into 3 dimensional space using assemblage techniques.

The Second Place winning entry was also a messaging piece by illustrator Jaii Mark Renee whose work is available as posters.:

The Third Prize piece, Jo-Sam by Pedro Valentin is the most compelling of the pieces in the Prize winning category. Valentin is a fine artist who is delivering the goods. The Jo-Sam painting makes use of the canvas, negative space, and gestural and expressive emotion to create a truly moving piece. This is a bit of a Black Swan entry in that there's nothing particularly impressive about style, innovative material application, or the usual aesthetic metrics involving painting. This piece just works, damn.

Valentin's second entry, Harriet, is equally impressive. The use of the aura in both pieces has deep historical roots in religious iconography, pointillism, and Benjamin's modernist theories. Here, it just works. The one curiosity that may be co-incidental are Harriet's hands that look a little too much like an AI glitching hallucination - this a minor observation. The just-off-center positioning of the figure also just works despite coming perilously close to a defacto bullseye perspective.

The Honorable Mention is also a damned fine piece of work. Abel by Christopher Baskerville is an incredibly well-crafted drawing and an uncanny piece of artwork. Baskerville's drawing employs Perlstein's figure cropping technique to constrain the attention on the subject. Abel is looking at you and trying to get a better look. The treatment of the ears is sublime - it's the gaze that's important. And look at those eyes - they are super charged - somehow enhanced to really LOOK-AT-YOU. Study the reflections off the eye. Superb.

Here's where the show gets into the ALNB's Black Mirror territory (it simply goes where it goes).

An outstanding picture for your consideration is Desire for Rebirth by Maurice Robinson Somee. I have a soft spot for the German Expressionists and Somee's picture of a woman's apparition is a blast from that past. This is the stuff that going to art shows is all about. It's a piece that pops and  isn't about to get confused as wallpaper. See if you agree.

But Somee's piece is simply a hold-my-beer challenge for Fior Rodriguez whose With Good Intention explores the complex psyche of the individual subject. In full disclosure, I'm becoming a fan of Rodriguez's work, it's strange and exposes video game stacks of questions and riddles. Here, a dream state or cyber state suspension of reality. Her comfort zone is a vacant apartment with a lone picture on an incompletely painted wall. Also, like Valentin, only the useful body parts are illustrated as if Elon Musk's observation that the only important thing about any of us is not the body but the mind.

There is another cohort of artists who are best described as outsider artists. Maurice D. Robertson's contribution to this show, Ocean Beach, is one of the strangest and most inspired photographs I've ever seen him exhibit. Ocean Beach is channeling the late David Lynch here. Robertson who is the ultimate CT arts scene insider is eternally the phantom documentarian of all things happening culturally in New England. An outsider who knows the territory.

The Ocean Beach photograph is different. I mean really different. First, it's a vertical picture of what should be a horizontal landscape scene. And it has an imperceptive quality to the scene - is this real?

The back foot of the boy rushing out of the picture looks as if something from an underworld is attempting to keep him there. Just behind him a white object looking like the top of a skull looks on.

And the horizon line is nothing more than a human wall of nondescript people - people like us but not us. And the sky above them looks mighty unhappy. An ancient Greek looking into those clouds could name you the Gods who are visiting. And is there even one grain of sand that hasn't been moved for human convenience? Something is written on that sand.

Gerald Kilyaw contributed a couple of pieces more along the lines of naive Outsider art. Lumberjacks illustrates an encounter between a black person dressed in perfunctory African colors and some Canadian lumberjacks. One can only guess why that memory is being memorialized here.

The rest of the show featured more material than I can cover in one review. Needless to say there were silkscreen prints, many more portraits, and some wonderful craft items including a carved sitting bench by Ira Halliday.

Check the Art League of New Britain website for further information.

The ALNB Artists of Color Show Part 1 Year 2 Critique

 For the second year in a row, the ALNB has sponsored another Artists of Color (AoC) show. I reviewed last  year's show in two parts and I'll do that again this year. This year I'll examine the Overview and Importance statement used to justify an exhibition whose eligibility is exclusively having nothing to do with actual art and everything to do with the skin color of the artist. The complete statement is fair use copied at  the end of this essay.

The Sizzle

This year's show is billed as " this show centers artists whose voices have historically been marginalized, yet whose work speaks powerfully to the present and future".

This requires a lot of qualification. First, to the best of my knowledge the Art League of New Britain has never (historically speaking) marginalized any art or artist. In fact this is a minor bone of contention among some members.

Personally, I prefer shows that emphasize artistic quality while most often shows are judged to allow novices and outliers to be shown alongside more serious artists. Who the artists is. again to the best of my knowledge, is not a criterion.

Also, none of the artists in this show have likely ever been personally marginalized as artists. Somebody in that group may believe that but I'd need some hard empirical evidence to believe that claim. As far as I can tell, this cohort of artists have been regularly shown, belong to the great middleclass, and have been around the art block many, many times.

The chances that these artists as a group speak "powerfully to the present and future" is hopeful but highly unlikely - we'll see in part two.

Representation Claims

"Connecticut’s cultural institutions have historically underrepresented artists of color."

Actually. No.

The arguments being made in these paragraphs are will fully ignorant of both Art and the people who make art and the people who buy and contribute art.

First, the demographics of the entire population is irrelevant. True artists are born to follow a calling - to make art. They, as a reality, are only a small population in terms of the entire population. All of that identity politics stuff is meaningless. 

The percentage of any subgroup is in relation to all visual artists and not the population of the United States or the world. Add to that, the number of collectors who bought and promoted the art they spent their hard earned money to buy. *THAT* is what is represented in cultural institutions until recently. Today the cultural institutions are curated and run by woke administrations that pander to identity politic driven special interest groups who have NO interest in the quality of art and every interest in partisan politic narratives. Today, ALL of these groups are vastly over-represented everywhere to the exclusion of intelligent and tasteful interests.

The "Struggle"

In this climate, BIPOC artists struggle for visibility

What? Define struggle. The NEA, NEFA, Real Art Ways, and the parade of CT galleries and museums are proxy ATMs for the entire woke parade of special interests. 

The Social Example

" this is a platform for dialogue and visibility—a space where diversity isn't a theme, but the heartbeat"

 There are a number of platitudes listed in the statement.

The Judeo-Christian ethic of "do unto others as you would have done unto you" is missing here. Bigotry is not a virtue and never was. Passing along this idea to future generations is ... what?.. the shared humanity you want to pass along?

Before anyone speaks the word "equity" they need to actually count the number of art pieces or artists actually being  represented in relation to who and what was entered.

Secondly, the white-skinned artists being excluded here are largely, Polish, Italian, Jewish, and European sons and daughters of working class immigrants whose grand-parents were dirt poor, discriminated against in their own time, had zero to do with racism, and managed to work their way to practice art. A lot of schooltime is spent learning about the civil war. It would be nice if the schools bothered to teach everyone about the struggles of everybody else. We all have narratives.

Appendix, the original statement and rationale:

Overview and Importance

Artists of color throughout the state of Connecticut are encouraged to submit up to three works of art for ALNB’s second annual Artists of Color Juried Exhibit!

This dynamic group exhibition celebrates the talent, vision, and cultural narratives of artists of color across a spectrum of mediums. From bold contemporary statements to intimate reflections of heritage and identity, this show centers artists whose voices have historically been marginalized, yet whose work speaks powerfully to the present and future.

Connecticut’s cultural institutions have historically underrepresented artists of color.
A 2019 Hartford-area arts study found that “people of color are not proportionately represented in Greater Hartford’s art workforce” (hfpg.org), and a follow-up report noted this gap prompted an advisory group to seek ways to “increase opportunities for artists of color” (ctmirror.org). National data reinforce the problem: in 30 major U.S. museums from 2008–2018, only 2.3% of acquisitions and 7.7% of exhibitions were by Black artists (sothebys.com), while African Americans are ~12% of the U.S. population. In CT, even smaller institutions skew white. For example, the Florence Griswold Museum (Old Lyme) reported that of 172 works shown in 2023, just 29 (17%) were by artists of color (florencegriswoldmuseum.org). New Britain is 63% people of color—a majority-demographic city where immigrant and minority communities drive local culture. Yet its arts infrastructure (galleries, museums, schools) has not caught up to this diversity. The Art League of New Britain and the New Britain Museum of American Art operate in a city with one of the lowest median incomes in the state (ctdatahaven.org), suggesting fewer private patrons to support broad programming. Moreover, New Britain’s students and young artists have limited pathways: city schools have had to prioritize core needs (and face $300+ million in funding gaps statewide for high-need districts, schoolstatefinance.org), which often crowds out arts classes and visits to museums.

In this climate, BIPOC artists struggle for visibility. For example, before 2024 the Art League had never mounted an exhibition exclusively for artists of color—reflecting an unintentional oversight, given that well over half of New Britain’s populace is non-white.

Organizing a dedicated show of artists of color directly addresses these inequities. It gives local Black, Latino, Asian-American, Indigenous, and multiracial artists a platform they have historically been denied in Connecticut’s art venues. By centering underrepresented creators, the Art League of New Britain's Artists of Color Show begins to redress the imbalance noted by statewide arts studies (hfpg.org, ctmirror.org). Such a show also has immediate benefits: it can inspire youth from New Britain’s diverse communities by putting role models on the wall; attract a broader audience to the League; and build partnerships with BIPOC-led arts organizations working to diversify CT’s cultural scene.

In short, this exhibition is not just timely—it’s essential for equity. As Connecticut’s arts leaders acknowledge, “when artists [of color] are valued, the whole community wins” (ctmirror.org). The Art League of New Britain's Artists of Color Show helps make that winning scenario a reality for New Britain and beyond.

More than a showcase, this is a platform for dialogue and visibility—a space where diversity isn't a theme, but the heartbeat. Join us in honoring the contributions of artists of color and experiencing the transformative power of art that reflects the depth and breadth of our shared humanity.