MARK YOUR CALENDARS: ART FOR LIFE VIRTUAL BENEFIT

ART FOR LIFE VIRTUAL BENEFIT: RUSH PHILANTHROPIC ARTS FOUNDATION CELEBRATES 25 YEARS OF IMPACT

Celebrity-Hosted Event benefits Community Programs for Youth and Emerging Artists

Philadelphia, PA – Rush Philanthropic Arts Foundation (RPAF) has announced the honorees for their virtual benefit, Art For Life: Rush Arts 25th Anniversary Celebration which will be live-streamed on November 21, 2020, at 5 PM PST/8 PM EST. Hosted by Danny Simmons and Vanessa Simmons, the event will honor Derrick Adams, Dawoud Bey, Reginald M Browne, and scholar Dr. Deborah Willis for their support of the arts, career achievements, and overall commitment to the community. A special award will be presented to Patricia Wilson Aden for exemplary service to the Philadelphia community. There will be a coinciding Art For Life online auction via Artsy during the event featuring works by Ming Smith, Derrick Adams, David Driskell, Renee Cox, Dawoud Bey, and Danny Simmons, among others.

Since 1995, Rush Arts has been dedicated to providing underserved youth with vital arts education and exhibition opportunities to emerging artists and curators of color.  During the pandemic shutdown, Rush Arts has continued to engage communities with new virtual programming which includes: Virtual Kids Art Workshops, Rush Tales: Virtual Studio Tour Series, and Artist Talks: Virtual Artist roundtable.  

Poet, visual artist and philanthropist Danny Simmons co-founded Rush Arts in New York City in 1995 with his brothers Russell Simmons and Joseph “Rev. Run” Simmons. The Simmons brothers created their nonprofit with the goal of filling the gap that people of color and the disenfranchised face in accessing the arts. Rush Arts also ran two New York City galleries which were the sites of early career exhibitions of artists like Simone Leigh, Wangechi Mutu, Kehinde Wiley, Mickalene Thomas and many other artists that are dominating the contemporary art scene today.

In 2016, Danny Simmons expanded Rush Arts to Philadelphia purchasing a historic building and developing the Rush Arts Philadelphia Gallery (RAP) and opening RAP II in 2019.  Simmons located RAP in the Logan section of Philadelphia to spur a revitalization of the neighborhood through the arts. Since opening RAP has offered free visual and performing arts classes and exhibitions that have provided exposure to emerging artists, while also introducing the community to high-quality fine art. RAP has partnerships with the Barnes Foundation, Art Sanctuary, PAFA, the African American Museum in Philadelphia (AMMP), and Mural Arts Philadelphia (MAP), among others.

Proceeds from ART FOR LIFE benefit the Foundation’s signature arts education and gallery programs, which have directly served tens of thousands of inner-city youth over the past 25 years.

Event Chairs include Brooke Davis Anderson, Susan Cahan, Larry Ossei-Mensah. Chris Vroom, Halima Taha, Coppy Wilson, Berrisford Boothe, Mark Gibson, Taneshia Nash Laird and Yolanda Caraway. 

For additional information on the benefit and the auction, please visit: artforlife.rushphilanthropic.org

About Rush Philanthropic Arts Foundation

Rush Philanthropic Arts Foundation’s mission is to build a community-driven art space that provides opportunities to both local artists and curators, focused on community revitalization and relevance to the people of the surrounding neighborhoods, and arts-based educational opportunities for local youth who can benefit from them the most.

See our experience at the Art For Life Gala

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