Assemblage Art Fund

Assemblage Art Fund is sponsored by Utah Museum of Contemporary Art. Supports artists and collectives in Salt Lake County with grants for collaborative, alternative, and publicly accessible projects.

The Assemblage Art Fund provides targeted support to visual artists and collectives in Salt Lake County, Utah for new projects that are alternative, collaborative, and intentionally engaging new and diverse audiences. By cultivating resources that enable artists to experiment, connect, and thrive, Assemblage Art Fund is a building block for the creation of long-term support structures for artists in Utah.

The Assemblage Art Fund awards 6-12 Salt Lake County-based artists annually, with grants awarded at either $5,000 (Process Grants) or $10,000 (Project Grants) depending on project scale and resource requirements. Awarded artists are selected by a jury panel of 4 arts professionals ranging from local, to regional/rural, to national and international.

The Assemblage Art Fund does not fund individual studio practice, works of theater, projects without a visual arts component, existing/ongoing projects or programs, projects proposed by or in direct partnership with a registered nonprofit, or exhibitions in existing program schedules. Please read all eligibility guidelines and application instructions carefully before applying.

Great Salt Lake Wet Cyanotype Workshop with Alexandra Fuller, organized by the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art, May 4, 2024, photo by Shaylee Navarro for UMOCA An experimental platform for collective making, Construction Company explores repair as both practice and philosophy.

Combining site-specific installation, public programming, and mobile education, the project engages with the poetics and politics of the construction site to examine housing, labor, and care in Salt Lake City. Through collaborative artistic action, Construction Company asks: How can building become a shared, reparative act? What forms of community emerge through the work of making and maintaining together?

Developed by artists Steven Chodoriwsky, Joshua Graham, and Chaz Prymek . Artist Cara Despain’s Home Front Doom Town combines installation, oral histories, and activism to confront Salt Lake City’s nuclear legacy. Inspired by 1950s “doom towns” built for atomic testing and her own family history as Downwinders, the project reimagines these sites as spaces for reflection and community dialogue.

Through reconstructed structures, video projection, and uranium glass displays, Despain asks: How does the fallout of nuclear history shape our present? What forms of collective reckoning and repair might emerge through art today? Artist Alexandria “Inez” Garcia’s The Monarch Migration is a mobile, site-responsive project combining sculpture, performance, and community storytelling.

Drawing inspiration from the transborder flight of Monarch butterflies, Garcia transforms wearable vitrines—each carrying live, ethically raised butterflies—into moving exhibitions through public celebrations. Community members contribute single words reflecting migration and belonging, forming an evolving visual archive.

Rooted in Mexican cultural symbolism of the Monarch as both traveler and spirit, the project asks: How can acts of migration, human and animal alike, illuminate resilience, remembrance, and renewal? Artist Rae Luebbert’s Soft Shoulder is a six-hour, interdisciplinary performance exhibition featuring six artists whose works unfold continuously over time.

Centered on the theme of residue—what remains as time passes—the project examines endurance, care, and accessibility as artistic forms. Grounded in Luebbert’s practice as a disabled artist, the exhibition builds flexibility and rest into its structure, inviting audiences to move, pause, and return as they wish. Soft Shoulder asks: What emerges when we give art, and each other, the gift of sustained attention?

Artist A Madden’s The Queer Birth Project is a multimedia exploration of queer family building through installation, film, performance, and community dialogue. Drawing from Madden’s own experience as a queer, nonbinary, solo parent, the project traces conception, birth, and caregiving as acts of creativity and resistance.

Through personal documentation and collective storytelling with queer and trans parents, birth workers, and allies, The Queer Birth Project asks: How can reimagining birth and kinship expand our visions of care, liberation, and belonging? Artist Sophie Nebeker’s Ceramic Kiln Firing Craft-Art Experience is a public engagement project combining accessible ceramic workshops with a communal raku kiln firing performance.

Participants create clay works while witnessing the transformative firing process, connecting craft, community, and ritual. Drawing from DIY culture and traditional practices, the project asks: How can making together foster resilience, creativity, and shared experience in uncertain times? Artists Kat Nix and Connor Estes’ Sounds of a Life Well-Loved explores pleasure and presence at life’s end through sound.

By collecting and weaving participants’ most comforting and meaningful sounds into an immersive “death nest” installation, the project asks: How can we reclaim what a good death looks like? How does engaging our final sense reshape the way we live, connect, and witness one another?

Artist collective Punto de Inflexión, led by Stephanie García and Peter Hay, El Puesto is a long-term, participatory performance and installation exploring intergenerational Latinx culture. Set in a market stand over five months, the project collects community stories, rituals, and memories, evoking the colors, sounds, and smells of traditional mercados.

El Puesto asks: How can shared cultural spaces cultivate connection, memory, and collective identity across generations? Artist Sara Serratos’ Restaurantes Mexicanos en Salt Lake County is a photographic project documenting the spaces, people, and signage of local Mexican restaurants. Celebrating the labor and presence of the Mexican community, the work transforms these restaurants into sites of art, memory, and cultural dialogue.

Presented through pop-up exhibitions and a photo book, the project asks: How can everyday spaces reflect, preserve, and honor community identity? Utah Museum of Contemporary Art Since 1931, the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art has been a gathering space for artists and creatives in our region.

Today, UMOCA’s exhibitions, art education programs, community engagement, and one-of-a-kind artist residency support local artists and communities while showcasing art from across the nation and globe. UMOCA is a seven-time recipient of funding from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and a two-time recipient of the Art Works Grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.

The Utah Museum of Contemporary Art believes in the power of the art of our time. Through programming, advocacy, and collaboration, we work with artists and communities to build a better world.

Visitors at July 12, 2024 opening reception at the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art The Andy Warhol Foundation In accordance with Andy Warhol’s will, the mission of The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts is the advancement of the visual arts.

The Foundation manages an innovative and flexible grants program while also preserving Warhol’s legacy through creative and responsible licensing policies and extensive scholarly research for ongoing catalogue raisonné projects. To date, the Foundation has given nearly $300 million in cash grants to more than 1,000 arts organizations in 49 states and abroad and has donated 52,786 works of art to 322 institutions worldwide.

The Assemblage Art Fund is funded through the generous support of The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts Regional Regranting Program . The Regional Regranting Program was established in 2007 to recognize and support the movement of independently organized, public-facing, artist-centered activity that animates local and regional art scenes but that lies beyond the reach of traditional funding sources.

The program is administered by non-profit visual art centers across the United States that work in partnership with the Foundation to fund artists’ experimental projects and collaborative undertakings. The 36 regranting programs provide grants of up to $10,000 for the creation and presentation of new work.

Programs are developed and facilitated by organizations in Albuquerque (NM), Atlanta (GA), Baltimore (MD), Boston (MA), Buffalo (NY), Chicago (IL), Cleveland (OH), Denver (CO), Detroit (MI), Houston (TX), Indianapolis (IN), Iowa City (IA), Kansas City (MO), Knoxville (TN), Rapid City (SD), Los Angeles (CA), Miami (FL), Milwaukee (WI), Minneapolis (MN), Mobile (AL), New Orleans (LA), Newark (NJ), O’ahu (HI) Oklahoma City (OK), Omaha (NE), Philadelphia (PA), Tucson (AZ), Portland (ME), Portland (OR), Providence (RI), Raleigh (NC), Saint Louis (MO), San Francisco (CA), San Juan (PR), Seattle (WA), and Washington, DC.