Alyssa Baguss

2021 MID-CAREER PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT GRANTEE | $5,000

Exploring New Ways of Funding Experimental Public Art

Alyssa Baguss’s Open Water began in July of 2019 as an experimental space for artists to interact with the Mississippi River. Continuing in 2020 via a Forecast Mid-Career Project Grant, the project now encourages socially distant happenings and supports artist experimentation during the pandemic.

“When public practice work looked nearly impossible at the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, I realized that with the mid-career project grant I had the ability to financially support the work of other artists and foster creative experimentation in a time of little opportunity. This funding has allowed me to mine this project to a depth that I could not have imagined when I originally applied for the funding in 2019.”

Situated aboard the Minneapolis Water Taxi on the Mississippi River in Northeast Minneapolis, Open Water includes nine artist-led boat tours containing a variety of visual, performing, and social practice art projects. The invited artists—Anna Metcalfe, Bart Buch, Beatrix*JAR, Ian Hanesworth, Jenni Undis, Megan Mayer, Laurie Van Wieren, Sarah Peters, and Harper Steinbach—each produced an hour long happening on the river to explore their artistic practice.

See more about Alyssa Baguss’s project and the artists she uplifted.