September 24, 2007

LOS ANGELES—Marking the two-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, the Getty Foundation, one of the country’s largest philanthropic supporters of the visual arts, has announced another round of grants specifically to support the ongoing recovery of New Orleans’ visual arts organizations. 

Launched in the wake of Hurricane Katrina’s devastation, the Getty Fund for New Orleans is helping revitalize the city’s cultural institutions.  To date, 14 grants totaling nearly $2 million have been awarded to the city’s landmark museums and community arts organizations.

New grants include $250,000 to The New Orleans Museum of Art, to aid the restoration of storm-damaged Sydney and Walda Besthoff Sculpture Garden, and $100,000 to Southern University at New Orleans, for the conservation treatment of storm-damaged collections within its Center for African and African American studies. Both the New Orleans Botanical Garden Foundation and the Woman’s Exchange, which owns and operates the Hermann-Grima and Gallier Historic Houses, will receive $120,000 and $79,000, respectively, to assist them in strategic planning efforts.

The National Trust of Historic Preservation also received $100,000 to support their efforts to preserve and rebuild New Orleans’ distinctive architecture.  This grant follows an earlier award, which helped launch the National Trust’s initial recovery and outreach efforts, resulting in damage assessment reports for 500 historic structures in the Gulf Coast region.

"The arts and architecture found in New Orleans are extraordinary.  Marking the two-year anniversary of the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, the Getty Foundation remains committed to assisting the ongoing recovery efforts of the New Orleans organizations that care for the city’s collections and historic properties,” says Deborah Marrow, director of the Getty Foundation. 

The Getty Foundation, among the largest arts funders working in New Orleans, launched the Getty Fund for New Orleans in February 2006 to help New Orleans’ visual arts institutions recover from the impact of Hurricane Katrina.

The Getty Foundation’s Fund for New Orleans provides two types of support: Conservation Grants, designed to assist the city’s cultural institutions in caring for vulnerable and damaged art collections, archives, and historic sites; and Transition Planning Grants, aimed at strengthening nonprofits as they respond to the changed environment for the arts following the storm.

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MEDIA CONTACT:
Melissa Abraham
Getty Communications
310-440-6861
mabraham@getty.edu

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The Getty Foundation is part of the J. Paul Getty Trust, an international cultural and philanthropic institution devoted to the visual arts located at the Getty Center in Los Angeles. The Foundation provides critical support to institutions and individuals throughout the world in fields that are aligned most closely with the Trust's strategic priorities. It therefore funds a diverse range of projects that promote learning and scholarship about the history of the visual arts and the conservation of cultural heritage, and it consistently searches for collaborative efforts that set high standards and make significant contributions. Since its inception in 1984, the Foundation has supported over 2,600 projects in more than 150 countries.