OCEANSIDE, CA (JUNE 2024) – Oceanside Museum of Art (OMA) is pleased to announce it has been approved by the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) for a Grants for Arts Projects award of $30,000. This grant will support Transformative Currents: Art and Action in the Pacific Ocean, as a part of the Getty initiative PST ART: Art & Science Collide. In total, the NEA will award 1,135 Grants for Arts Projects totaling more than $37 million as part of its second round of fiscal year 2024 grants.
“Projects like Transformative Currents: Art and Action in the Pacific Ocean exemplify the creativity and care with which communities are telling their stories, creating connection, and responding to challenges and opportunities in their communities—all through the arts,” said NEA Chair Maria Rosario Jackson, PhD. “So many aspects of our communities such as cultural vitality, health and wellbeing, infrastructure, and the economy are advanced and improved through investments in art and design, and the National Endowment for the Arts is committed to ensuring people across the country benefit.”
“The support from the NEA is instrumental in enabling us to realize Transformative Currents: Art and Action in the Pacific Ocean and create a dialog between artists across Southern California and throughout Pacific regions,” said Maria Mingalone, Executive Director of OMA. “The NEA’s commitment to this project also underscores the importance of harnessing art’s power to transform communities and to offer possibilities for change, starting with awareness and education to improve coastal conditions and the health of our ocean.”
Open to the public from August 17 in part, and from September 7 in full, through January 19, 2025, Transformative Currents examines the historical causes and ongoing effects of the cultural and environmental devastation of the Pacific Ocean and harnesses art’s potential to enact positive ecological change, both local and planetary. Works in diverse media, including video, sculpture, drawings, and photography, by 21 international contemporary artists and collaborative teams are organized around the theme of ocean currents, which traverse the Pacific and suggest fluidity, interconnectivity, and collective responsibility.
Transformative Currents is the first exhibition of its kind in Southern California to channel this geographically diverse range of perspectives on environmental issues throughout the entirety of the Pacific Ocean. It is a testament to the power of collaborative and interdisciplinary approaches, bridging artistic, scientific, and Indigenous knowledge systems to foster a deeper understanding of the Pacific’s vast cultural and ecological landscapes. Each project addresses a specific issue affecting the oceanic environment; together, they highlight interdependency and the impact of local actions on global problems.
For more information on other projects included in the NEA’s grant announcement, visit www.arts.gov/news.
For more information about Transformative Currents at Oceanside Museum of Art, please visit www.oma-online.org.
For more information about PST ART, please visit https://pst.art/.
About Oceanside Museum of Art
Oceanside Museum of Art (OMA) is a non-profit organization that began providing exhibitions and public programs in 1995 as part of their mission to bring people together to explore the art and stories of Southern California artists. OMA’s exhibition program is dynamic and robust, surprising visitors with a fresh and exciting visual experience nearly every visit. In addition to these boundary-pushing contemporary art exhibitions, OMA’s programming includes youth education programs, adult art classes, concerts, films, and creative community parties and events that appeal to locals and tourists alike. The OMA experience stimulates imagination, presents new ideas, and challenges the familiar in a welcoming environment for those new to art, longtime museum-goers, artists, art students, or simply the curious. For more information on Oceanside Museum of Art, visit https://oma-online.org/.
