The Block Museum of Art is grateful to announce that it is the recipient of a $45,000 Grants for Arts Projects award from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) to support the exhibition Rosalie Favell: Indigenous Artists Facing the Camera. This upcoming exhibition will feature new work created by the artist to expand her landmark photo series Facing the Camera (2008-2018). The Block’s project is among 1,130 projects across the country, totaling more than $31 million in awarded grants, that were selected during the NEA’s second round of Grants for Arts Projects 2023 funding. 

“The National Endowment for the Arts is pleased to support a wide range of projects, including The Block Museum’s Rosalie Favell exhibition, demonstrating the many ways the arts enrich our lives and contribute to healthy and thriving communities,” said NEA Chair Maria Rosario Jackson, PhD. “These organizations play an important role in advancing the creative vitality of our nation and helping to ensure that all people can benefit from arts, culture, and design.” 

Rosalie Favell’s sustained photographic project Facing the Camera places Indigenous artists and arts professionals, an often underseen and underrecognized community within the art world, in front of the camera. What was initially a spontaneous artistic project has expanded through time into an intentional and extensive record of nearly 500 photographs of artists, writers, musicians, curators and filmmakers with Native American and Indigenous Identities.  

As Favell notes: “The impetus for the series derived from my realization that a document had not been made of individuals who make up the Indigenous arts community. In 2008, I was in a residency at the Banff Centre and saw for the first time a number of prominent Indigenous artists together as a group—artists who I had previously only known by name alone. That coupled with my interest in portrait photography made me want to embark upon this documentary project.” 

The fall 2023 exhibition, following a spring 2023 campus residency by the artist, will feature over 100 portraits from the series, along with new portraits taken by the artist during her time at The Block. The presentation is the first major exhibition of the project in a museum setting in the United States. The Block will collaborate with Indigenous-led partner organizations to invite participation and develop exhibition co-programming.