Mass Cultural PartnershIP

In 2019, we began a partnership with the Massachusetts Cultural Council to launch Look at Art. Get Paid. across a cohort of art museums in Massachusetts as part of the Universal Participation Initiative.

The opportunity to partner with Mass Cultural came after an extensive search for a values-aligned funder and partner.

This artist-led multi-year collaboration aimed to bring new energy to advancing equity and access in Massachusetts museums by investing in those not served by them. We worked closely with Mass Cultural to create the partnership and develop a cohort of museums committed to fostering deep dialogue with, and accountability to, their surrounding communities. Partnering with a state agency allowed us to operate as artists, while ensuring that critical roles stewarding the impact of the project—such as evaluation, community organizing, and change-management—were robustly fulfilled. We also had the opportunity to bring on staff member Emily Curran as program coordinator.

After developing the partnership together, we launched programming in March of 2020 — just as the pandemic brought the state’s cultural sector to a grinding halt. The Mass Cultural Council pivoted immediately to emergency response, funding relief efforts for struggling artists and cultural institutions. The year that followed was filled with uncertainty as we all adapted to multiple shifting scenarios with a staggering amount of moving parts, schedules, and partners. Despite the creativity, vision, and commitment of everyone involved, ultimately it was not possible to continue the original project.

Equity and access remain central issues in museums and cultural organizations. Under the visionary leadership of Executive Director Michael Bobbitt, Mass Cultural Council is pushing forward a bolder-than-ever vision for equity and anti-racism in the cultural sector and remains a steadfast champion of the Look at Art. Get Paid. model. The collaborators of Look at Art. Get Paid. continue to share and draw upon our experiences with this project, working in new ways to explore these ideas independently and in various collaborations. It is our hope that cultural institutions will continue to be inspired to use the ideas and processes from Look at Art. Get Paid. in their own practices.

Learn more about our partnership:

  • LISTEN: We discussed the ideas at the heart of Look at Art. Get Paid. with Anita Walker, former Executive Director of Mass Cultural Council, in this episode of the podcast Creative Minds Out Loud.

  • READ: We discussed Look at Art. Get Paid. and the Mass Cultural partnership in this interview with curator Laura Raicovich.

  • WATCH: Co-founder Josephine Devanbu discussed museums, art, cultural accessibility, and Look at Art. Get Paid. as an inspiration for the UMass Campus Climate project “Making Art Yours,” at the University Museum of Contemporary Art. Watch the talk here.


Learn more about our team and advisors for this project here.