Traditional Fine Arts Organization

2024-2025 content preferences and funding strategy

(above: Charles Reiffel, Summer Session at Ballast Point, San Diego, 1930, Vallejo Gallery. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons*)

Content preferences

We are interested in funding online exhibits that employ innovative techniques to further our mission of fostering "education in, and nurturing understanding of, American representational art among student and adult populations through publication, financial assistance to nonprofit arts organizations and related activities."

During 2024, we seek to support exhibits and other presentations that engender in visitors reactions such as joy, wonder, awe and amazement at artistic prowess, yet de-emphasize life's daily and major struggles. We are excited about projects that accentuate the gentle side of human behavior, expressed by love, kindness, empathy, gratitude and healing. Within this context we are amenable to projects featuring natural beauty through depiction of fauna, flora, landscape and the human form. Exhibits emphasizing  belligerence, eroticism, ideological struggle and political activism are outside the boundary of our preferences.  

All online information posted concerning an exhibition must be archived and at all times available to the public without charge. Examples of exhibitions with physical and/or online elements co-sponsored by TFAO are A Fanciful World: Jessie Arms Botke and Striking Figures: Francis De Erdely

We du not accept applications for exhibits of student art

What does "beauty" mean to us?  Here are quotes for guidance:

"Beauty is good for you. It makes you feel better." -Alexander Creswell

 

"Loads of people, particularly artists, hate pretty pictures. Now I've never met anyone who didn't like a pretty face." -David Hockney

 

"A painted landscape is always more beautiful than a real one, because there's more there. Everything is more sensual, and one takes refuge in its beauty." -Fernando Botero

 

"Beauty matters. It is not just a subjective thing but a universal need of human beings. If we ignore this need we find ourselves in a spiritual desert." -Roger Scruton

 

"A dominant impulse on encountering beauty is to wish to hold on to it, to possess it and give it weight in one's life. There is an urge to say, 'I was here, I saw this and it mattered to me." -Alain de Botton

 

"Let us not mince words... the marvelous is always beautiful, anything marvelous is beautiful, in fact only the marvelous is beautiful." -Andre Breton

 

"No synonym for God is so perfect as Beauty. Whether as seen carving the lines of the mountains with glaciers, or gathering matter into stars, or planning the movements of water, or gardening -- still all is Beauty!" -John Muir

Funding strategy

We:

-- enjoy initiating seed or challenge grants to museums and cultural centers. Where practical, generating competitive behavior among prospective donors is a strategy we endorse and have found repetitively successful. Also, we find that being a seed donor -- either first donor or among a among a set of initial donors to a project -- creates momentum for grants from other sources. Other forms of exhibition support are also welcome.

-- prefer that our grants be in the $2,000 to $10,000 range per project and comprise around 10% to 20% of third party costs. Lower grant amounts may be preferable in some circumstances. Depending on circumstances, grants may be issued 100% up front or follow a phased schedule. For onsite/indoors exhibition projects, we are amenable to co-sponsoring or fully sponsoring single out of pocket line items such as paper-printed brochures, online catalogs or outdoors banners with prominent placement of artworks specific to an exhibition.

-- require that potential grantees secure necessary government approvals before funding.

-- will weigh our desirability of grant issuance based on funding strategy as well as content preference.

For examples of American representational art related to our preferences, please see:

Avian Art

Botanical Art

Domestic and Wildlife Art: 18-19th Century, 19-20th Century, 20-21st Century

Equine and Equestrian Art: 18-19th Century, 19-20th Century, 20-21st Century

Figurative and Portrait Art: 18-19th Century, 19-20th Century, 20-21st Century

Healing and Medicine Art

Landscape Art: 18-19th Century, 19-20th Century, 20-21st Century

Marine, Coastal and Maritime Art: 18-19th Century, 19-20th Century, 20-21st Century

Religious Art

Other co-sponsors

From time to time, private parties acquainted with us may wish to become additional co-sponsors in their own right..We welcome their enthusiasm and may encourage them to support certain exhibitions. In those instances, we may ask applicants to allow us to share responses to inquiries and further steps materials sent to us.

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*Tag for expired US copyright of object image:

Links to sources of information outside of our web site are provided only as referrals for your further consideration. Please use due diligence in judging the quality of information contained in these and all other web sites. Information from linked sources may be inaccurate or out of date. TFAO neither recommends or endorses these referenced organizations. Although TFAO includes links to other web sites, it takes no responsibility for the content or information contained on those other sites, nor exerts any editorial or other control over them. For more information on evaluating web pages see TFAO's General Resources section in Online Resources for Collectors and Students of Art History.

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Copyright 2024 Traditional Fine Arts Organization, Inc., an Arizona nonprofit corporation. All rights reserved.