Burchfield Penney Art Center Among Awardees for National Endowment for the Arts 2025 Grants for Arts Projects

Buffalo, NY — The Burchfield Penney Art Center 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 the Mark Maio: Against the Grain exhibition slated to open in the Wendt & Doolittle Galleries at the Center this year. The NEA will award 1,127 Grants for Arts Projects awards nationwide totaling more than $31.8 million as part of the recent announcement of fiscal year 2025 grants. 

“The NEA is proud to continue our nearly 60 years of supporting the efforts of organizations and artists that help to shape our country’s vibrant arts sector and communities of all types across our nation,” said NEA Chair Maria Rosario Jackson, PhD. “It is inspiring to see the wide range of creative projects taking place, including the Burchfield Penney's Mark Maio: Against the Grain exhibition.”

"The NEA's support of the Burchfield Penney and all cultural organizations is essential," said Burchfield Penney Executive Director Scott Propeack.  "Without them, it would be difficult to present essential work like that of Mark Maio. Maio's amazing photographs, interviews, and subjects tell our community's complex history and connections beyond Buffalo."

Against the Grain explores the final decades of Buffalo's once-thriving grain industry through striking images captured by photographer Mark Maio. Maio was granted unprecedented access to document the lives and labor of the Irish Immigrants who settled Buffalo's First Ward and scooped the grain transported along the Erie Canal. The resulting body of work is the only in-depth visual document of this 200-year-old industry, now forever gone. The Burchfield Penney will mount the exhibition with an accompanying book in the Autumn of 2025.

For more information on other projects included in the NEA’s grant announcement, visit arts.gov/news.

ABOUT THE BURCHFIELD PENNEY ART CENTER 
Established in 1966 on the campus of SUNY Buffalo State University, the Burchfield Penney Art Center is dedicated to the art and vision of renowned American artist Charles E. Burchfield (1893–1967) and the art and artists of Buffalo and our region. 

The Burchfield Penney Art Center at SUNY Buffalo State receives public support from SUNY Buffalo State University, Erie County, the New York State Council on the Arts, the Institute for Museum and Library Sciences, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the City of Buffalo. Private support is provided by KeyBank in partnership with the First Niagara Foundation, The Cameron and Jane Baird Foundation, the Cullen Foundation, the Charles E. Burchfield Foundation, M&T Bank, The John R. Oishei Foundation, The Margaret L. Wendt Foundation, John and Paula Reinhold/Joy Family Foundation, The Western New York Foundation, the Elizabeth Elser Doolittle Trust, the Mary A. H. Rumsey Foundation, the James Carey Evans Endowment, and many additional individuals, corporations, foundations, and Burchfield Penney members. 

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
For more information please contact:
Julia Norris
Director of Communications
norrisjl[at]buffalostate.edu