about the fellowship

The University of Memphis, in partnership with the UrbanArt Commission, is proud to host the work of six local artists who participated in the 2023-2024 New Public Artists Fellowship. UAC and the University of Memphis collaborated on this program to address the institutional barriers artists face when creating large-scale public sculptures and to support artists expanding their practices beyond the studio. In particular, womxn and artists of color are greatly underrepresented in this artistic field.

The New Public Artists Fellowship provides in-depth training and professional development resources to up-and-coming, talented artists. The artists participating in the program were afforded the unique opportunity to travel to New York City, where they experienced firsthand the grandeur of large-scale public art installations and gained valuable insights by visiting a public art fabrication studio. During the spring of 2023, the fellows participated in workshops with guest artists and arts administrators before proposing temporary outdoor sculptures. These temporary artworks can now be found throughout the University of Memphis campus.

Each sculpture invites the viewer to engage with the art directly. Some works playfully involve the surrounding space and encourage viewers to see their surroundings from a new perspective. Other sculptures disrupt viewers’ experiences of the environment and seek to challenge commonly held ideas and beliefs. As you encounter each sculpture, allow the art to provoke a response. These artworks actively invite questions with their engaging compositions.

This project was supported, in whole or in part, by federal award number SLFRP5534 awarded to the State of Tennessee by the U.S. Department of the Treasury.