ARTE NOIR's Black Artist Roster Seeks to Level the Playing Field for Black Artists in Washington State

by Jas Keimig

Last month, Central District arts organization and gallery ARTE NOIR launched Black Artist Roster, a pilot program connecting Black artists in Washington State with local, national, and international arts opportunities. The roster is a means of breaking down some of the barriers that come with being a Black artist and potentially get their work in front of curators, developers, promoters, and audiences who can support them.

The Black Artist Roster is simple — anyone who identifies as a Black artist of any kind, is age 15 years or older, and lives in Washington State is free to sign up. The form asks for things like an artist statement, what media category the work belongs to, level of experience, and art examples. Once submitted, the artist will officially become part of the Black Artist Roster database and will get regular emails with calls for public art projects, curators, residencies, speaking opportunities, and more. On the application, ARTE NOIR says it will vet the calls that come its way and will not give out any personal information — it's on the artists to respond to the calls directly.

"Ultimately, this roster will serve to eliminate the age-old commentary, 'We just can't find anyone,'" the form says. "Using the Black artist roster should leave little room for excuses of not being able to connect with Black artists working across all disciplines."

The idea for Black Artist Roster had been on Vivian Phillips' mind for years. As an arts consultant and the founder and board president of ARTE NOIR, she regularly received requests and inquiries seeking Black artists for various projects and realized there was no one central hub to connect artists with opportunities. Wanting to level the playing field and reach outside the network of artists ARTE NOIR regularly works with, this roster seemed like a great opportunity to uplift Black artists across the state.

"The artist roster came about as a way to broaden the spectrum and to create an organized way for artists to create a profile, have it be available, and then we could also create a portal where people could go directly to submit opportunities," said Phillips in a recent interview. "So it wasn't about them coming to me or one of us [at ARTE NOIR]. It felt like a more democratic process."

While any Black artist in Washington State is welcome to submit, the priority right now is on King County artists, in part thanks to funding from the County's Gathering Collaborative grant, a group of community members uplifting Black and Indigenous people as those most affected by racism. The Black Artist Roster form will close on Sept. 30, 2024, so ARTE NOIR has time to assess and expand the roster outside of its pilot program mode. It plans to reopen the form once again in January 2025.

Sign up for ARTE NOIR's Black Artist Roster here.

Featured Image: Community members gather to hear an artist talk from Aramis Hamer in the ARTE NOIR gallery space. (Photo by Hilary Northcraft, courtesy of ARTE NOIR.)