Altria Group Awards More Than $3 Million to Visual Arts and Cultural Organizations Across The Country

2004 Arts Grants Underscore Commitment to Innovation, Diversity, Community and Focus on Contemporary Work

Altria Group, Inc., the parent company of Kraft Foods, Philip Morris International and Philip Morris USA, has announced more than $3 million in grants to visual arts and cultural organizations in the United States this year, ranging from large, well-established institutions to smaller emerging organizations and alternative spaces.

As part of Altria Group’s commitment to the arts, the company awarded 20 grants to visual arts institutions totaling $1 million from a competitive pool of nearly 200 proposals. Altria Group also awarded over $1 million to sponsor such exhibitions as the 2004 Whitney Biennial; Return of the Buddha: The Qingzhou Discoveries, at the Freer Sackler Gallery in Washington, D.C.; Dan Flavin: A Retrospective, at the National Gallery of Art; and Tropicalia: A Parallel Modernity in Brazil, at the Bronx Museum of the Arts. In addition, Altria awarded grants totaling nearly $1 million in unrestricted, general operating support to 61 arts and cultural organizations.

This funding supports the company’s commitment to promoting diversity, innovation and experimentation in the arts; fostering community development; and advancing scholarship and new areas of exploration in contemporary art.

"For nearly 50 years, the Altria family of companies has been committed to improving the quality of life in communities around the world through investment in the arts," said Jennifer Goodale, Vice President, Contributions at Altria Corporate Services, Inc. "We support the arts because we believe that the arts enrich the mind and spirit; foster innovation, creativity and excellence; and challenge us to explore new ideas and perspectives--critical concepts in today's business environment."

In recent years, Altria modified its arts program to enable the company to better respond to needs in the field and to support institutions that implement groundbreaking programs. Altria Group now provides two-year operating grants to organizations in the performing arts and visual arts in alternating years through a Request for Proposals application process that is available online.

In addition, to gain input from respected voices in the museum community, Altria Group now convenes a panel of curators with growing reputations in the field to advise the company on the grants that are submitted through the competitive proposal process. This year’s panel included:

• Nicholas Baume, Chief Curator of the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston
• Laurie Ann Farrell, Curator at the Museum of African Art in New York
• Dominic Molon, Associate Curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago
• Lydia Yee, Curator at the Bronx Museum of the Arts

"Altria’s modified grant process underscores the company’s commitment to supporting new developments in the arts and addressing critical issues," said Nicholas Baume, Chief Curator of the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston. "As both a past grantee and member of this year’s review panel, I have seen firsthand Altria’s depth of knowledge of the arts and strong interest in making an impact with its support."

Focus on Innovation, Creativity, Diversity and Contemporary Art

Since its early support of the pioneering exhibition Pop and Op: An Exhibition of 65 Graphic Works in 1965, Altria Group has been recognized for its commitment to innovative and experimental contemporary artists and art movements, and to diversity in the field. Since 1958, Altria Group has awarded more than $210 million to arts organizations across the United States and around the world.

Current Altria Group projects in the visual arts include major exhibitions of contemporary artists with acclaimed bodies of works that have not been recently shown or received major retrospectives. They include:

• Lee Bontecou: A Retrospective (Museum of Modern Art, New York City, July 30 -September 27, 2004), the first in-depth retrospective of this influential American artist, who was one of the few female artists of the 1960s to gain international acclaim. In addition to seminal works from the 1960s and 1970s, the exhibition features later work on view for the first time. The exhibition is co-organized by the UCLA Hammer Museum and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago. As national tour sponsor, Altria Group also supported the Los Angeles and Chicago presentations.
• Robert Smithson (Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, September 12 - December 13, 2004), the first comprehensive American retrospective of Robert Smithson's (1938-73) complex and highly influential career. Best known as the creator of Spiral Jetty (1970), a 1,500-foot-long and 15-foot-wide rock coil that stretches into Utah’s Great Salt Lake, American artist Smithson has long been acknowledged as one of the pioneers of earth art. The exhibition is organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles and will tour to the Dallas Museum of Art, January 14 - April 3, 2005, as well as to the Whitney Museum of American Art, Summer 2005.

• Dan Flavin: A Retrospective (National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., October 3, 2004 - January 9, 2005), the first comprehensive retrospective of one of the most innovative artists of the late 20th century who is known for his work in fluorescent light. Altria Group is supporting the national tour of the exhibition, which is organized by Dia Art Foundation in association with the National Gallery of Art and includes the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, February 25 - June 25, 2005; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, July 1 - October 30, 2005; Dia Art Foundation, and international touring sites.

"Altria is a recognized leader in supporting projects that build awareness of innovative artists among a wide spectrum of audiences, so it was natural for us to approach the company when we began planning the first major retrospective of the work of Dan Flavin," said Michael Govan, Director of Dia Art Foundation. "Altria has had a wonderful partnership with Dia since 1989. In 2002, they supported our exhibition Robert Whitman: Playback."

Altria Group also supports exhibitions that advance new artistic developments and scholarship in the field. Recent grants include:

• Visual Music: 1905-2005 (Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, February 13 - May 22, 2005), will focus on the influence of music on the development of abstract and mixed-media visual art forms from the early 20th century to the present. The exhibition is co-organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C., where it will be on view June 23 - September 11, 2005.

• Groundworks: Environmental Collaboration in Contemporary Art (Regina Gouger Miller Gallery at Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, January 14 - March 13, 2005), will explore the role of the contemporary artist in addressing critical questions about nature, culture, and planning in a postindustrial era. The exhibition features installations and documentation of earthworks and ecological projects, as well as site-specific works utilizing the three rivers and 53 streams of Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, to help develop a model for artists and communities to address the cultural understanding of living rivers and water quality.
• Five Architects: Barney, Gang, Hadid, Sejima, Snow (Chicago Architecture Foundation, June 2005), is one of the first exhibitions to raise public recognition for the work of women architects, who continue to face considerable challenges in the field. It features recent and current Midwestern projects by Carol Ross Barney, Jeanne Gang, Zaha Hadid, Kazuyo Sejima, and Julie Snow.

Altria Group’s support of the arts also reflects its longstanding commitment to supporting diversity in the field, evidenced by its funding of the first surveys of African-American, Latino, and Native American art. Recent grants include:

• Huang Yong Ping: A Retrospective (Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, October 2005), the first historical, in-depth survey of a quintessential artist of the 21st century - a Chinese artist working and living in Paris, whose work negotiates East and West, as well as traditional and avant-garde practice.
• Family Legacies: The Art of Betye, Lezley, and Alison Saar (Ackland Art Museum at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, December 18, 2005 through March 26, 2006), the first exhibition to study and present together the work of three nationally recognized artists within the context of the family’s distinct contributions to art history. "Family Legacies" will explore the transmission of traditions, materials, and subject matter within an exceptional family (mother and two daughters) of artists of mixed race.
• El Museo's 4th Biennial: The (S) Files: The Selected Files (El Museo del Barrio, May - September, 2005), presents an overview of new innovative art produced by "emerging" Latino and Latin American artists currently living and working in New York City. Altria Group has supported this biennial since its inception in 1999.

"Altria has been a longtime supporter of El Museo del Barrio. In addition to its early support of our biennial exhibition, the company has demonstrated its commitment to building a wider appreciation of Latino and Latin American art and culture though its funding over the past two decades of such exhibitions as MoMA at El Museo: Latin American and Caribbean Art from the Museum of Modern Art; Here and There/Aquí y Allá: Six Artists from San Juan; and Art of the Other Mexico: Sources and Meanings," said Julián Zugazagoitia, director of El Museo del Barrio.

Commitment to Community

In 2004, Altria awarded nearly $1 million in two-year, unrestricted grants for general operating support to 61 museums and cultural centers, primarily in the New York metropolitan area, where Altria Group is headquartered, and in Washington, D.C. Grants were awarded to a range of institutions from those of international scope and scale, such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art, to smaller, community-based institutions such as Art in General and Exit Art.

"In these challenging economic times, general operating support is critical for the survival of many cultural organizations," said Jeanette Ingberman, Founder and Director, Exit Art. "Altria has demonstrated an unprecedented, unparalleled and long-standing commitment to supporting institutions that bolster the arts in our communities and enable us to keep our doors open to the public."

As part of its commitment to the New York community and to build audiences for the arts, Altria Group funds the Whitney Museum of American Art, located at Altria Group’s midtown Manhattan office, which celebrated its 20th anniversary last year. The company is also supporting a project of the National Center for Disability Services that is working with the Queens Museum of Art, South Street Seaport and the Nassau County Museum of Art to help people with disabilities access the arts.

In addition, Altria Group is the lead sponsor of the Romare Bearden Homecoming Celebration, a seven-month, citywide arts festival launching this September that celebrates the life and art of African-American artist Romare Bearden. The Celebration involves a range of New York cultural organizations, including the Apollo Theater, Brooklyn Academy of Music, Bronx Museum of the Arts, Jamaica Center for Arts & Learning, Jazz at Lincoln Center, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Snug Harbor Cultural Center, The Studio Museum in Harlem, and the Whitney Museum of American Art.

Altria Group, Inc. Profile

Altria Group is the parent company of Kraft Foods, Philip Morris International and Philip Morris USA. For more than 50 years, Altria Group has supported programs and charitable organizations through its corporate contributions efforts. In the last 10 years alone, the Altria family of companies has provided more than $1 billion in charitable assistance to communities around the world, including more than $130 million to arts organizations across the United States. Annually, across the enterprise the company provides some $12 million to the arts by supporting the visual and performing arts, arts and education and arts advocacy programs. In addition to the arts, the Altria family of companies also supports organizations and programs that fight hunger, help victims of domestic violence and disasters, and improve the environment for future generations.

For more information about the Altria family of companies' program and philanthropy, visit www.altria.com/media.

A list of arts and cultural organizations that received 2004 grants is attached.

2004 Arts Grants

Organization	Exhibition	City, State	Amount
Ackland Art Museum at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill	Family Legacies: The Art of Betye, Lezley, and Alison Saar	Chapel Hill, NC	$70,000
American Folk Art Museum	Examining Martin Ramirez: A Self-Taught Mexican Artist (working title)	New York, NY	$75,000
Art in General	In this Place	New York, NY	$20,000
Blaffer Gallery, the Art Museum of  the University of Houston	Jessica Stockholder: Kissing the Wall, Works 1988-2004	Houston, TX	$75,000
Bronx Museum of the Arts	Tropicalia: A Parallel Modernity in Brazil	Bronx, NY	$150,000
Bruce Museum of Arts and Science	American Impressionism: The Beauty of Work	Greenwich, CT	$50,000
Chicago Architecture Foundation	Five Architects: Barney, Gang, Hadid, Sejima, Snow	Chicago, IL	$30,000
China Institute in America	Transformations: Chinese Culture at the Crossroads	New York, NY	$50,000
Des Moines Art Center	Christian Jankowski	Des Moines, IA	$40,000
Dia Art Foundation	Dan Flavin: A Retrospective	New York, NY	$300,000
El Museo del Barrio	El Museo's 4th Biennial: The (S) Files: The Selected Files	New York, NY	$35,000
Exit Art	The Drop	New York, NY	$25,000
Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery	Return of the Buddha: The Qingzhou	Washington, D.C.	$125,000
Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution	Visual Music, 1905-2005	Washington, D.C.	$75,000
Isamu Noguchi Foundation	Noguchi and Graham	Long Island City, NY	$35,000
Jewish Museum, The	Common Ground (tentative title)	New York, NY	$50,000
Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego	Strange New World/Extrano Nuevo Mundo, Perspectivas desde Tijuana	La Jolla, CA	$100,000
Museum of the African Diaspora, The	Disperal: New Works by Four Contemporary Artists from the African Diaspora	San Francisco, CA	$25,000
National Center for Disability Services	Welcoming New Audiences: Connecting People with Disabilities to Museums	Albertson, NY	$25,000
National Museum of Women in the Arts	Alice Neel's Women	Washington, D.C.	$45,000
Norton Museum of Art	Continental Drift: Installations by Joan Jonas, Ilya Kabakov, Juan Munoz, and Yinka Shonibare	West Palm Beach, FL	$25,000
Orange County Museum of Art	Mary Heilmann	Newport Beach, CA	$45,000
Regina Gouger Miller Gallery at Carnegie Mellon University	Groundworks: Environmental Collaboration in Contemporary Art	Pittsburgh, PA	$35,000
Romare Bearden Foundation	Romare Bearden Homecoming Celebration	New York, NY	$150,000
Site Santa Fe	2004 Exhibition Program	Santa Fe, NM	$25,000
Studio Museum in Harlem, The	energy X experimentation: African American Artists and Abstraction 1964-1980	New York,   NY	$100,000
UCLA Hammer Museum	Made in Mexico	Los Angeles, CA	$40,000
Walker Art Center	Huang Yong Ping: A Retrospective	Minneapolis, MN	$45,000
White Columns	Odd Lots	New York,   NY	$25,000
Whitney Museum of American Art	2004 Whitney Biennial	New York,   NY	$200,000
TOTAL			$2,090,000

2004-2005 Community Arts Grants

Organization	City, State	Amount
Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art	Ridgefield, CT	$5,000
American Federation of Arts	New York, NY	$10,000
American Museum of Natural History	New York, NY	$50,000
American Folk Art Museum	New York, NY	$5,000
American Museum of the Moving Image	Astoria, NY	$20,000
Apex Art	New York, NY	$5,000
Art in General Inc.	New York, NY	$5,000
Artists Space	New York, NY	$15,000
Arts and Business Council, The	New York, NY	$5,000
Arttable	New York, NY	$2,000
Asia Society	New York, NY	$50,000
Asian American Arts Alliance	New York, NY	$5,000
Bronx Museum of Art	Bronx, NY	$5,000
Brooklyn Botanic Garden	Brooklyn, NY	$20,000
Brooklyn Children's Museum	Brooklyn, NY	$10,000
Brooklyn Museum of Art	Brooklyn, NY	$10,000
Business Committee for the Arts Inc.	Long Island City, NY	$10,000
Creative Time	New York, NY	$10,000
Dia Center for the Arts	New York, NY	$7,500
Drawing Center, The	New York, NY	$10,000
El Museo del Barrio	New York, NY	$10,000
Exit Art	New York, NY	$15,000
Franklin Furnace Archive	New York, NY	$5,000
Frick Collection, The	New York, NY	$10,000
Guggenheim Museum	New York, NY	$20,000
Independent Curators International	New York, NY	$10,000
International Center of Photography	New York, NY	$10,000
Japan Society, The	New York, NY	$10,000
Jersey City Museum, The	Jersey City, NJ	$5,000
Jewish Museum, The	New York, NY	$7,500
Katonah Museum of Art	Katonah, NY	$5,000
Lincoln Center Consolidated Corporate Fund	New York, NY	$200,000
Metropolitan Museum of Art	New York, NY	$100,000
Momenta Art	Brooklyn, NY	$5,000
Montclair Art Museum	Montclair, NJ	$5,000
Morgan Library	New York, NY	$10,000
Municipal Art Society of New York, The	New York, NY	$5,000
Museum for African Art	Long Island City, NY	$10,000
Museum of Arts and Design	New York, NY	$20,000
Museum of Modern Art	New York, NY	$20,000
Museum of the City of New York	New York, NY	$10,000
National Academy of Design	New York, NY	$10,000
National Museum of Women in the Arts	Washington, D.C.	$2,500
New Museum of Contemporary Art	New York, NY	$10,000
New York Botanical Garden, The	Bronx, NY	$30,000
New York Public Library	New York, NY	$20,000
New York Public Library/Schomburg Center	New York, NY	$20,000
New York Studio School of Drawing, Painting and Sculpture, Inc.	New York, NY	$5,000
P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center, Inc.	New York, NY	$10,000
Phillips Collection, The	Washington, D.C.	$10,000
Printed Matter, The	New York, NY	$5,000
Public Art Fund	New York, NY	$5,000
Queens Botanical Garden Society, Inc.	Flushing, NY	$10,000
Queens Museum of Art	Queens, NY	$20,000
Smithsonian/Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum	New York, NY	$10,000
Snug Harbor Cultural Center	Staten Island, NY	$10,000
Socrates Sculpture Park	Long Island City, NY	$5,000
Studio Museum in Harlem, The	New York, NY	$10,000
Corcoran Gallery of Art, The	Washington, D.C.	$20,000
Wave Hill	Bronx, NY	$5,000
Wildlife Conservation Society	Bronx, NY	$20,000
TOTAL		$989,500

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