The Museum of Contemporary Art Santa Barbara (MCASB), in California, has issued a call for submissions for designers worldwide to come up with a large-scale pavilion to be built in the city. The winner will receive a $5,000 award, supplemented by an additional $45,000 to support their project. The selected team will then collaborate with MCASB curators to realize the final design. The inaugural “TakePart/Make Art” program is funded by the James Irvine Foundation’s Exploring Engagement Fund to integrate engaging design within communities. Instead of keeping artists’ work confined to a museum, the program wants to bring it out into a communal area to grow the artists’ audience and provide a space for them to be more creative with their mediums.
Over the course of two years, the public program will commission six artists to create public art through a series of community-based residencies that engage the public as co-creators. The prompt calls for designs that address pressing needs within the area. To garner support, the museum will make the installation mobile and travel with it to three different communities in and around Santa Barbara : Isla Vista, the Westside, and the Waterfront.
“This competition encourages designers, artists, architects and creative to experiment with bold, innovative thinking that can both challenge and produce rich dialogue with the traditional, California Mission aesthetic that typically characterizes Santa Barbara,” MCASB executive director Miki Garcia said in a press release.
Entries can be submitted from April 1 through April 21.
