The Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh (CMP) is dedicated to fostering the talent and innovation of artists as experience makers. The Tough Art Residency Program, that began in 2007, was approaching its 14th year of existence this summer. Unfortunately, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the residency had to be canceled for 2020 season.

In light of that, we began to consider how we might engage our audience while the Museum remains closed. The Museum is always committed to working with artists to present excellent contemporary art to our visitors. Every year artists are invited to work with the museum through a multitude of programs and projects, and the Museum is committed to continuing this mission throughout the closure.

Thinking about the possibilities during this age of online engagement, the fact that we aren’t having in-person residencies, or even open to the public for visitors to interact with our current art installations, we were inspired to find a way to connect artists with our audience, and vice versa.

This has prompted a call-for-artists who are interested in making their work accessible to CMP’s audience. The challenge is for artists to create an art making activity related in some way to their artwork/process that would inspire a do-it-yourself project for people to create wherever they may be.

The residency offers a $200 artist stipend, that will be awarded to 5 artists.

Artists will be asked to work with CMP staff during the timeframe of late-September 2020 through October 2020, online, to produce a final product that will be disseminated to CMP networks beginning November 2020. This will be available through CMP’s web presence (websites, social media platforms, etc.) as a digital download/link.