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.
At Art Bridges, we believe everyone deserves access to American art, no matter where they live. Art connects us with cultures beyond our own, fostering vital community bonds that help us all thrive.
To achieve this, we collaborate with a growing network of nearly 250 museums of all sizes across the United States and its territories. We provide financial and strategic support to help arts and cultural institutions facilitate traveling exhibitions, coordinate collection loans, and develop programs that captivate and empower local audiences.
How it works
Art Bridges is dedicated to expanding access to American art so that everyone can engage with meaningful works that educate and inspire. Through initiatives like our Partner Loan Network, which enables museums nationwide to share their collections, and our Traveling Exhibitions program, which lowers barriers for smaller institutions, we work to bring art out of storage and into communities.
To achieve this, Art Bridges manages all logistical aspects of our loans and programming, including packaging, shipping, loan agreements, and insurance, all at no additional cost to the museum.
Our network is growing nationwide. Some of the remarkable works we’ve been able to loan from major institutions to museums across the country include:
- Memorial Art Gallery: With the help of Art Bridges, the Memorial Art Gallery (MAG) at the University of Rochester received a loan of Clementine Hunter’s artworks from the American Folk Art Museum. The loan helped MAG fill a necessary gap in its programming, displaying more works by BIPOC artists and reflecting the demographics of the local community.
- Hudson River Museum: The Hudson River Museum introduced twelve artworks on loan from the Joslyn Art Museum to incorporate into its fourteen-month exhibition, Order/Reorder: Experiments with Collections. The exhibit aimed to examine past and present American identities through various media and was paired with a series of events and interactive experiences for its audiences.
- Huntsville Museum of Art: The Huntsville Museum of Art created a dedicated American gallery to increase the amount of its collection on view. Art Bridges supported it by loaning important works to contextualize further and expand the story of American Art in this new space.
Interested in learning more about what Art Bridges can do for your community? Contact us today!
I appreciate all the the Alliance does and am privileged to be a member of the organization!