This post is an advertorial written by an organization that serves the museum field. The views, opinions, and positions expressed by the authors and those providing comments are theirs alone and do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, or positions of AAM or its employees.

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“Art is hope, it’s opportunity, it’s education, it’s all of the things we all want.”

Ask someone working in the arts why they work in the arts. Often the answer lies in a formative experience in youth, when exposure to great art inspired and instilled a drive to share that experience with others.

At Art Bridges Foundation, our goal is to increase access to art such that those experiences can be had and shared by everyone, regardless of location, cultural background, or material conditions.

We partner with a growing network of over 220 museums nationwide to provide financial and strategic support for exhibition development, loans from the Art Bridges Permanent Collection, and programs designed to educate, inspire, and deepen engagement with local communities.

We offer support to our partners through the following programs:

• Art Bridges Permanent Collection Loans: We collect diverse works of American art to share with museums and communities across the country. To date, the Art Bridges Permanent Collection comprises over 200 objects that are available for loan. Borrowing partners make loans publicly accessible in a manner that sparks new conversations or ways of thinking, posing questions about what could or should make up the American artistic canon.
• Collection Loan Partnership: Our Collection Loan Partnership program brings American art out of museum storage to share with communities across the United States. Lending partners are institutions with deep holdings that identify artworks from their collections for loan in consultation with Art Bridges. Those artworks are prepared for borrowing partners in curated groups of five to seven objects and for loan periods of twelve to twenty-four months.
• Traveling Exhibitions: We support the creation and presentation of traveling exhibitions. Lending partners are generally museums with large or focused collections that work with Art Bridges to organize touring exhibitions from their collections. Borrowing partners are museums that are eager to engage their community with great American art and are committed to innovation, experimentation, and multidisciplinary approaches. We provide logistical support and cover direct costs involved with both artwork preparation and presentation.
• Learning & Engagement: Program funding is available to institutions presenting an Art-Bridges-supported exhibition of American art. The Art Bridges Learning & Engagement team works directly with presenting partners to design innovative programming that builds relationships with new audiences, engages current audiences in new ways, or emphasizes interdisciplinary elements.
• Cohort Program: The Cohort Program supports multi-institutional, multi-year exhibition partnership projects nationwide. For each project, an organizing museum and its regional partners form a cohort to collaboratively create a series of American art exhibitions that deepen engagement with local communities. Sharing collections and resources, cohort partners work together to generate exhibitions that are content-rich, include in-depth educational and interpretive materials, and are designed to meet a wide range of audience interests.

Art is for everyone. It challenges us, moves us, creates dialogue, and sparks ideas capable of changing the world. Art Bridges is here to support your efforts to share American art with communities nationwide.

Visit artbridgesfoundation.org to learn more about our programs!