The Hermitage Receives $80,000 Grant from Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts

The Hermitage Artist Retreat has received an $80,000 grant award from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts in support of Hermitage visual artists and their associated public programming. These funds, spread across a two-year period, are intended to support and increase visibility for the work of Hermitage Fellows in the visual arts through support of these artists’ Hermitage residencies and associated programming.

This is the first grant award for the Hermitage from the Warhol Foundation, which is committed to providing visual artists with invaluable, career-advancing opportunities to work in partnership with other artists and organizations. The Hermitage also supports the work of artists spanning the disciplines of music, theater, literature, dance, and more.
In accordance with the will of legendary artist Andy Warhol, the mission of the Warhol Foundation is the advancement of the visual arts. The foundation manages an innovative and dynamic 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 awarded nearly $300 million in cash grants to over 1,000 arts organizations around the United States and abroad, and has donated 52,786 works of art to 322 institutions worldwide. 

Andy Warhol was an avant-garde artist and philanthropic visionary; his life, work, and directive to establish a foundation for “the advancement of the visual arts” are a testament to that. The Foundation honors his cultural influence in their core values and all of the Foundation’s activities. In strong mission alignment with the Hermitage, The Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts believes in the intrinsic value of experimental artistic practice and promote artistic participation in cultural conversations at the highest level, and celebrates artistic expression as an integral part of democracy, risk-taking, and supporting underserved communities. 

“We are truly grateful to the Warhol Foundation for recognizing and celebrating the Hermitage’s contributions to the world of visual arts,” says Hermitage Artistic Director and CEO Andy Sandberg. “This invaluable support will help us to further champion the work and creative process of the diverse and accomplished Hermitage artists who are making a meaningful impact in our community and around the world.”
"We are pleased to support the Hermitage Artist Retreat, which supports and inspires artists to make ambitious new work," says Rachel Bers, Program Director at the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. "Through its residencies and public programs, the Hermitage provides artists with important opportunities to nurture their creativity and connect audiences to their work."

Through the Hermitage’s long standing collaboration with The Ringling Museum of Art, memorable exhibitions from Hermitage Fellows have included Sanford Biggers, Trenton Doyle Hancock, R. Luke DuBois, Anne Patterson, Coco Fusco, Laurie Olinder, David Burnett, and more. Hermitage Greenfield Prize (HGP) winner Sandy Rodriguez’s exhibition Currents of Resistance debuts at The Ringling in April, resulting from her Hermitage commission, while Hermitage Fellow Jess T. Dugan: I Want You to Know My Name is on view at The Ringling through February.

The Hermitage presented two acclaimed alumni exhibitions at the Sarasota Art Museum in 2024. Impact: Contemporary Artists at the Hermitage Artist Retreat, featured work from ten nationally and internationally renowned Hermitage alumni artists: Diana Al-Hadid, Sanford Biggers (2010 Hermitage Greenfield Prize winner), Chitra Ganesh, Todd Gray, Trenton Doyle Hancock (2013 Hermitage Greenfield Prize winner), Michelle Lopez, Ted Riederer, the late John Sims, Kukuli Velarde, and William Villalongo; Impact was overseen by guest curator and former Hermitage Curatorial Council member Dan Cameron. This robust and imaginative exhibition featured work across a range of media, including sculpture, painting, installation, video, photography, printmaking, ceramics, textiles, and social practice, all contemplating the various ways the Hermitage residency had and continues to impact their creative practice. The Truth of the Night Sky, a Hermitage collaboration, was the second exhibition of Hermitage alumni premiering at Sarasota Art Museum. After meeting while in residence at the Hermitage Artist Retreat ten years ago and building on their friendship and collaboration, multidisciplinary visual artist Anne Patterson and composer Patrick Harlin joined forces to develop a one-of-a-kind immersive experience. The exhibition featured several works by Patterson, as well as a suspended tree and her signature satin ribbon installation work. With each step, visitors traveled imaginatively through space and time. Of their time at the Hermitage Artist Retreat, Patterson and Harlin are fond of saying that their experience was invaluable to their craft and their collaboration, allowing them to achieve new heights, find a unique environmental inspiration, and explore new possibilities in their work. The Sarasota Art Museum also recently presented the work of Hermitage Fellow Juana Valdés, entitled Embodied Memories, Ancestral Histories.

A leading national arts incubator, the Hermitage is the only major arts organization in Florida’s Gulf Coast exclusively committed to supporting the development and creation of new work across all artistic disciplines. The Hermitage hosts artists on its Gulf Coast Manasota Key campus for multi-week residencies, where diverse and accomplished artists from around the world and across multiple disciplines create and develop new works of visual art, theater, music, literature, dance, film, and more. As part of their residencies, Hermitage Fellows participate in free year-round community programs, offering audiences in the region a unique opportunity to engage with some of the world’s leading artists and to get an authentic “sneak peek” into extraordinary projects and artistic minds before their works go on to major galleries, concert halls, theaters, and museums around the world. These free and innovative programs include performances, conversations, readings, music concerts, interactive experiences, open studios, school programs, teacher workshops, and more, serving thousands in our regional community each year.

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