AMERICAN AUSTRALIAN ASSOCIATION ANNOUNCES ARUNA D’SOUZA AS RECIPIENT OF THE BEVERLEY ARTS WRITERS TRAVEL GRANT TO AUSTRALIA FOR 2024

AMERICAN AUSTRALIAN ASSOCIATION ANNOUNCES ARUNA D’SOUZA AS RECIPIENT OF THE BEVERLEY ARTS WRITERS TRAVEL GRANT TO AUSTRALIA FOR 2024

New York, NY, July 1 – The American Australian Association is pleased to announce that New York-based writer Aruna D’Souza is the 2024 recipient of The Beverley Art Writers Travel Grant to Australia (The Beverley). Now in its third year, The Beverley is the result of a partnership between the Association and Australian expatriate John Melick, founder of Blue Medium, a New York-based art and design public relations firm.

The Beverley is administered by the American Australian Association. The 2024 grant selection  committee—comprised of art world professionals with a working or personal connection to the visual  arts community in Australia—included: Anne Ellegood, Good Works Executive Director of the Institute of Contemporary Art (Los Angeles, CA); Mark Hughes, Founder of Mark Hughes Art Advisory (Sydney, Australia); Rachel Kent, Chief Executive Officer of Bundanon (Illaroo, Australia); Jessica Lynne, writer and arts critic (New York, NY); and Trevor Smith, Associate Director of The Peabody Essex Museum (Salem, MA).

Aruna D’Souza is a freelance writer and art critic based in New York. Her work focuses on artists of the global majority, and on art whose intersecting aesthetic and political possibilities allow us to imagine new, more just, kinder forms of life. D’Souza’s new book, Imperfect Solidarities, will be published this summer with Floating Opera Press. She is the author of Whitewalling: Art, Race & Protest in 3 Acts (2018) and her writing appears regularly in 4Columns and The New York Times. She completed a PhD in modern and contemporary art at New York University.

In addition to her art criticism, D’Souza co-curated the first full-scale retrospective of the work of Lorraine O’Grady (“Lorraine O’Grady: Both/And”), and edited both the exhibition catalogue for the show as well as her volume of collected writings, Writing in Space, 1972-2017 (Duke University Press). D’Souza also serves on the advisory board of Critical Minded, an organization which seeks to support and expand opportunities for critics of color across the arts.

While in Australia, D’Souza plans to engage with the work of First Nations artists, not only to experience their art but also the collective structures that artists have built to support themselves and their creative communities. D’Souza also plans to explore the impact that Asian immigration has had on the Australian arts  landscape.

“Travel is one of the essential ways we learn and refresh our understanding of the world”, explained John Berry, President of the American Australian Association. “By traveling to Australia, our arts journalists here in the United States can help spread the rich culture of Australian fine art and culture to wider audiences.”

The name of the grant is in honor of the grant founder’s mother, Beverley Joan Melick (née van Eerde), who currently resides in New South Wales, Australia. According to John Melick, “as a painter and designer, my mother has inspired me to pursue a career in promoting the visual arts in the US and globally. As a public relations professional, I’ve witnessed a reduction in media travel budgets that has also led to less cultural exchange and coverage of my home country’s art. This is a small way to have a positive impact on free, independent, and exceptional art journalism from the US while also benefiting Australia more broadly.”

To learn more about The Beverley, please visit here.

Note to media: 2023 grantee Lauren O’Neill-Butler will be in conversation with 2022 grantee Jessica Lynne at 6pm on Wednesday, July 24 at AAA headquarters (600 3rd Ave) discussing her recent trip to Australia in May 2024. Registration is essential. For more information and to register, visit here.

Background: 

The American Australian Association is the leading privately funded nonprofit organization dedicated to deepening and strengthening cooperation and understanding between the institutions and people of the United States and Australia. Since 2002, the Association’s philanthropic scholarship and grant programs have awarded over US$17 million to more than 1,100 graduates, veterans, and artists. This investment has contributed to further advancing the careers of the next generation of leaders, developing international networks, and generating solutions that address the global issues of our time.

Website – www.americanaustralian.org

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Media Contacts 
For additional information or to request an interview please contact:
Katrina Stewart
[email protected]
Blue Medium
+1.212.675.1800

For additional information on the American Australian Association please contact:
Richard Burrows, Education Programs Manager
American Australian Association
[email protected]
+1.212.338.6862