Harpo Foundation

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Harpo Foundation

The Harpo Foundation was established in 2006 to support artists who are under recognized by the field.

The foundation seeks to stimulate creative inquiry to encourage new modes of thinking about art. We view the definitions of art and artist to be open-ended and expansive. The Foundation’s grant program awards 7-10 grants annually. Grants are made directly to artists to support their development and to non-profit organizations in support of new work by artists. The Foundation also supports two resi

dency fellowship programs. The Native American Residency Fellowship program provides residency opportunities at the Vermont Studio Center to support the development of artists and the potential for inter-cultural dialog. The Emerging Artist Residency Fellowship program supports residency opportunities at the Santa Fe Art Institute for visual artists 25 years and older who need time and space to explore ideas and start new projects.

08/19/2026

August's featured artist, 2025 grantee Ling-lin Ku, sees her studio as both a playground and a site of alchemy. Her artistic practice blends traditional techniques with emerging technologies, resulting in multimedia sculptures and installations that are playful, materially curious, and conceptually layered. Often beginning with eccentric or unexpected ideas, her work evolves into forms that slip between categories and invite open interpretation. As a woman of color and immigrant to the U.S., Ku navigates the paradox of standing out while remaining unseen, a tension that informs much of her work.

08/14/2026

Just over 35 years ago, Ed Levine began building in a clearing at the bottom of his recently purchased land in South Royalton, VT. Pictured here a year into the project, Levine stands in front of the first building of what would later become his grand project "Vermont Village: A Conversation Between Art, Water and the Land." This shed, initially labeled "Ed's Studio" has now become the meeting place for our public tours where visitors can watch films about Ed's artistic vision and philosophy before embarking on their own discovery of the site.

For more on Vermont Village and the artistic career of Ed Levine check out our new publication "Ed Levine: The Embodied Experience of Art." Information and purchase link on our website.

08/11/2026

It's summer on the mountain and these fungi popped up just in time for our recent artist-in-residence Jan Mun to enjoy them!

Mun is a media artist that creates social sculptures working with digital and living media to create interactive installations, photography, performance, and bio-art. During her residency she connected with multiple collaborators, including mycologists and environmental justice activists, working in and with the environment and specifically South Royalton's surrounding areas.

We are so proud to include Jan among the creative thinkers that have engaged with Back River Road.

07/30/2026

Book Launch this Saturday Aug 1 at the Vermont Law & Graduate School.

4-6pm

Join us for a reception and author conversations about Harpo’s recent publication Ed Levine: The Embodied Experience of Art. Author conversations begin at 4:30pm.

More info on the publication and its authors in the News section of the Harpo website (link in bio).

We hope to see you there!

Artbook | D.A.P.
Julie Reiss
Annalise Flynn
c. morgan
Marivi Véliz
Penny Balkin Bach
Michelle West
David & Corenia Tortolano

07/29/2026

For all the hikers, naturalists, art-enthusiasts, and general nature-lovers out there, we hope you will come visit Vermont Village and experience a new way of seeing art and nature.

Spots are still available on our docent-led tours of artist Ed Levine's site-specific, sculptural installation in South Royalton, Vermont on the following dates:

Sat AUG 22 at 10am, 12:30pm, or 3:00pm
Sat SEP 12 at 10am, 12:30pm, or 3:00pm

FREE and open to the public with advance registration (see www.backriverroad.org for more details and signup page).

07/23/2026

In conjunction with the recent release of Harpo's first publication "Ed Levine: The Embodied Experience of Art," we are proud to highlight the invaluable insights of the book's editor, Dr. Julie Reiss.

In her essay outlining the genesis of Ed Levine's site-specific work Vermont Village, Dr. Reiss illuminates the complexity of Levine's project, explaining that "Levine considered not only how the Vermont buildings would be perceived from different angles, but also how nature would be perceived from inside them". She goes on to describe the work as "an opportunity to experience nature in a space intimate enough to hear one's own thoughts," encouraging the reader to reflect on - in Levine's words - "what nature may mean to us and how nature views us."

Reiss is a Brooklyn-based art historian and critic with a focus on the role artists can play in social change. She has lectured and taught extensively on environmental art, currently teaching courses on Art and Sustainability at Columbia University.

If you are in Vermont, please take the opportunity to attend a conversation between authors, including Dr. Reiss, to discuss "Ed Levine: The Embodied Experience of Art" at:
Vermont Law and Graduate School
164 Chelsea Street
South Royalton, Vermont
Saturday August 1 at 4:00PM.

07/09/2026

This month we're proud to highlight the work of 2025 Grantee Fred Schmidt-Arenales whose practice highlights the mutually reinforcing relationship between individual behaviors and collective power structures, and tests points of departure from these habitual reinforcements. The sites of his investigations include governmental structures, imperial and colonial legacies, public and private institutions (like universities), and political conflicts over control and access to natural resources. Drawing from a breadth of source material, his practice stages scenes and conversations, sometimes participatory, which enact specific histories, objects, and people in order to bring awareness to implicit power dynamics and authority structures. He then documents these interactions and transcribes, translates, and edits them into films, installations, and performances. Through this process of mediation, the work reports on one or multiple experiences of the production process, creating spatial installations and time based works in which audiences can make their own discoveries and form their own hypotheses, and ideally reflect on how the kind of dynamics depicted in the work unfold in the communities, groups, and relationships that they take part in.

06/22/2026

This year marks the 20th anniversary of the creation of the Harpo Foundation by Ed Levine. As part of the commemoration of Harpo’s decades long commitment to supporting visual artists and encouraging creative ways of thinking about art, we are proud to announce the upcoming release of a new publication about his significant and lasting contributions to contemporary art as a critic, artist, educator. "Ed Levine: The Embodied Experience of Art" chronicles Levine’s life and career through scholarly essays, statements from colleagues, a detailed chronology, and republished texts from Levine’s oeuvre of critical writing. It is also the first publication to document his most ambitious artwork, "Vermont Village: A Conversation between Art, Water and the Land," a large-scale sculptural environment situated in central Vermont.

Pre-order your copy here: https://0yessc-e9.myshopify.com/products/ed-levine-the-embodied-experience-of-art

06/18/2026

This summer we are pleased to announce that, for the first time, Ed Levine's most ambitious and enduring artwork, "Vermont Village: A Conversation Between Art, Water and the Land" in South Royalton, VT, will be available for scheduled visits. A limited number of tours are now available and open to the public by reservation on select weekends in June, August, and September. To schedule a tour, visit our tours page at https://backriverroad.org/vermont-village-tours/

Address

99 Gansevoort St
New York, NY
10014

Website

http://www.harpofoundation.org/

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