The Indigo Arts Alliance (IAA), a non-profit and artist residency in Portland, Maine, has purchased the 8,000 sq. ft building it had been renting since its founding in 2018. The building, which was purpose-built and designed with IAA co-founders Daniel and Marcia Minter, houses artists’ studios, offices and spaces for exhibitions and programming that IAA uses to support Black and Brown artists in particular. Achieved through fundraising over the last year and a half, the acquisition of the building marks a significant step in ensuring the organisation’s long-term sustainability.
“From our very inception, Indigo Arts Alliance was envisioned as a legacy organisation that would serve as a model of community engagement for the arts with a specific focus on amplifying Black and Brown creativity,” Jordia Benjamin, IAA’s executive director, tells The Art Newspaper. “Our property ownership secures our legacy and ensures that our long-term commitment to serve local, regional and global artists of colour can exist for generations to come.” She adds: “This neighbourhood has become the most expensive and one of the most desirable in Portland. We knew that it was imperative that we purchase the building due to the constant rise in rents and demand for real estate in the area.”
Since its founding in 2018, IAA has hosted nearly 80 artists in residence through three programmes: its mentorship residency, the David C. Driskell Fellowship at Black Seed Studio and the C. Daniel Dawson Curatorial & Research Fellowship. IAA has welcomed creatives with heritage in 22 countries whose residencies range from one to three months, with around 14 joining each year across the three programmes.
Sarah K. Khan, 2019 Indigo Arts Alliance artist in residence alumnus, working inside one of two dedicated artist studios that are a part of the IAA Studio Building during her residency in 2019 Photo by Darren Setlow
Apart from the David C. Driskell Fellowship, which is application-based, residents are nominated to apply by alumni advisors, community members and the non-profit’s network. Artists can be emerging to established and are not expected to produce a final project during their time. Residents can adapt IAA’s studio space to fit their needs, and past participants have been practitioners of a range of disciplines including painting, sculpture, dance and choreography. In addition to its building, IAA has purchased two nearby condo units where artists can live free of charge during their residencies.
The East Bayside neighbourhood where IAA is located is home to a historically diverse community with many immigrant and Black residents. “It was essential that Indigo Arts Alliance—the state’s first Black-led, Black- and Brown-centred, now Black-owned [building]—would be located here,” Benjamin says. “IAA wanted to confront the false narrative that Maine is an ‘all-white state’. It is important to us that the community and our visiting artists can see each other existing. In this way we preserve and contribute to evolving history by correcting a false narrative.”
Community is at the core of IAA’s mission. Artists in residence are connected to others from nearby neighbourhoods and across New England, helping to create networks that last beyond the residency. IAA also hosts events, curatorial projects and a public book festival that includes a book giveaway for local families.
Left to right: Arisa White (2022 Indigo Arts Alliance residency alumnus), Joan Morgan, Matt Garza and Yasmine Jameelah in conversation on the first floor of the IAA Studio Building during an afternoon panel for The Welcome Table, an intergenerational symposium presented in June 2024 by Indigo Arts Alliance to celebrate the cultural and culinary traditions of worldwide historical social justice movements Photo by Mia Del Bene
The non-profit also partners with other cultural organisations to engage with communities outside of Portland, such as the Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens in Boothbay, with which IAA organises a multi-year series of public symposia called “Deconstructing the Boundaries”. Focused on urgent issues facing Black, Brown and Indigenous communities, such as land and food resilience, the final edition will take place this July and focus on ecological justice and the climate crisis. Having a permanent space will help IAA continue to build these and other relationships in the future.
“IAA exists to shape, support, lift up and transform our society through practices of love and creativity,” Benjamin says. “Our ownership allows us to honour our ancestors and elders, ensuring that their histories are held, preserved and told by centring cultural wisdom and knowledge. To quote an African proverb from the Akan people, Sankofa: ‘Take wisdom from the past to guide the present and future.’ This proverb embodies who we are, what we do and where we are going.”
