About the Foundation
Plumas Art Foundation supports local artists in the Plastic Arts field and acts to promote their rights and standing within Israel’s culture-related policies.
The Foundation was established following the decision of the Basis for Art and Culture NPO, after the 2020 closing of the Basis School and Cultural Center. In 2021, the organization changed its name and updated its goals. The Foundation is funded by private sources, with no government assistance or restrictions other than the laws governing NPOs.
The Foundation’s main project is awarding grants to artists in appreciation of their work and as a show of trust in their future development. The Foundation allows repeated applications by artists during their professional lifespan.
Alongside its main activity, the Foundation has set several complementary goals:
- To promote artists right to fair compensation for their artistic work;
- To promote the Plastic Arts in community spaces and raise the awareness of the authorities about art’s contribution to the community;
- To promote art research, for the enrichment of the art discourse, and the documentation of the Plastic Arts activities in the country, with all its current variations.
The Foundation’s Tenets
Artists
The Foundation views artists and their creative passions as the cornerstone and source of vitality for the art field. It seeks to reinforce their central position in the field’s ecosystem and their standing in our cultural life.
Artistic freedom
The Foundation believes in artistic freedom as a necessary condition for the quality of the work of art. In the Foundation’s view, creative freedom means freedom from external dictates, be they covert or overt, regarding content, style, relevance to the discourse, the zeitgeist, or the field’s expectations.
A Broad Range of Approaches and Tastes
The Foundation’s evaluation process seeks to examine the work from multiple angles, employing a variety of ways to define artistic excellence and a range of preferences in terms of styles and mediums. The professionals charged with evaluating the candidates’ works operate in anonymity and have the freedom to assess the work’s artistic quality according to their perceptions. The process is based not on a committee discussion but on weighing the individual assessments of professional experts, who change each year.
Accessibility of the Application Process
The process of applying for artist grants is based on the Foundation’s goal of employing an equal-opportunity approach whenever possible, to allow each eligible artist to submit a grant application. When building its operational model, the Foundation considered the potential barriers faced by the various populations that make up the cultural mosaic in Israel, including yet-unknown artists and those experiencing exclusion from the center of the art world.
Fair Representation
The Foundation awards grants first and foremost based on a professional evaluation of the artist’s body of work. At the same time, the Foundation believes in the fair representation of various groups in the population and the art field, seeking diversity in gender, cultural background, age, career status, and geographical dispersion. The Foundation directors use their judgment in instances of obvious imbalance, in the advanced stages of the selection process.
Trusting the Artists and Their Choices
The Foundation believes that the ways to develop an artwork are many. There is no single definition of success, and the individual artist is responsible for using the grant to benefit the work in his or her own way. In light of this approach, the Foundation awards open grants. There is no requirement to report on how they are used.
Members of the Plumas Art Foundation NPO
The Plumas Art Foundation members are committed to its goals and to keeping the boundary lines between management and professional evaluation. The Foundation members do not recommend artists to the application list and are not involved in the evaluation process.
Management
- Doris Arkin – chairperson of the board
- Ran Gottfried – board member
- Oded Gera – board member
Members
- Vardina Rudi
- Michal Kamir – oversight committee
- Oren Most
- Jameel Mabariki
- Hagit Bachar – oversight committee
- Itai Arkin
Foundation Staff
- Dorit Zinger – general manager
- Gal Meir – activities director
