The Shed announced today that it is seeking proposals for new works across all disciplines for the fourth edition of Open Call, its large-scale commissioning program for early-career artists who live and work in New York City. Proposals are currently being accepted online with a submission deadline of April 4, 2024. Commissions from selected artists will be presented in summer 2025 (visual art) and in 2026 (live performance). As in prior editions, tickets to Open Call will be offered free to the public. More information about applying to Open Call is available at theshed.org/opencallapply.
“Open Call embodies The Shed’s commitment to supporting early-career artists and making their work accessible to new audiences,” said Darren Biggart, Director of Civic Programs. “Through a democratized selection process, we connect with game-changing multidisciplinary artists who are making transformative and timely work. Our first three cohorts have left an indelible mark on the arts landscape of New York City and beyond. We are excited to select a new group of artists whose work will interrogate our past, contextualize our present, and envision our possible futures.”
The Shed’s Open Call program supports NYC’s diversity of emerging talent and showcases a wide, multiborough range of voices, lived experiences, and perspectives through new works across visual arts, theater, dance, music, performance, spoken word, literary arts, film, fashion, art and technology, social practice, and new media, as well as across multiple and new disciplines. The Shed will support selected projects with a commissioning fee of up to $15,000 of producing stewardship per artist or collective as well as in-kind financial, artistic, and production support managed by The Shed.
As in the three previous editions, participants for Open Call’s fourth edition will be selected by more than 50 independent leaders across artistic fields, including artists, cultural programmers, curators, producers, academics, and members of The Shed’s program team. The application review will take place in summer 2024, and selected artists will be announced later this year.
Open Call was launched in 2018 and renewed in 2020 in the face of the unprecedented humanitarian, social, and cultural crisis that the pandemic presented to the cultural sector and, in particular, to communities of color. Over 80 artists have presented their new commissions as part of Open Call every year since 2019. Eight new commissions from the performance artists of Open Call’s third edition will premiere in summer 2024. Tickets will go on sale late spring and are free to the public. For a list of the past Open Call artists and more information about their commissions visit theshed.org/opencall.
The selection process for the fourth edition of Open Call is organized by Tamara McCaw, Senior Advisor; Darren Biggart, Director of Civic Programs; Dejá Belardo, Assistant Curator, Visual Arts and Civic Programs; and Daisy Peele, Associate Producer.
The program was conceived by The Shed’s Artistic Director, Alex Poots; Tamara McCaw, Senior Advisor and former Chief Civic Program Officer; Emma Enderby, former Chief Curator; and Senior Program Advisor Hans Ulrich Obrist.
