All City Art Club awarded National Academy of Design’s 2023 Abbey Mural Prize

Southside’s own All City Art Club were one of five projects selected as recipients of the National Academy of Design’s 2023 Abbey Mural Prize. The prize money will allow the group to paint a new collection of murals “throughout Southside Richmond and other areas of the city needing art that is created with care & purpose.”

Named for illustrator and muralist Edwin Austin Abbey NA, the Abbey Mural Prize awards grants to support the creation and restoration of public murals in the United States. The National Academy of Design has awarded funds to hundreds of individuals or organizations since 1940 “who are building on a tradition of public murals as instruments of social activism, neighborhood revitalization, and community engagement.” The Abbey Mural Prize supports projects with grants ranging from $10,000 to $40,000, towards creating or restoring public murals.

(The murals of All City Art Club were the motivation for our Map of South Richmond Murals and Street Art. Get out and see the work!)

From All City Art Club:

It has been an eventful couple of years for us at All City Art Club. Both individually and as a collective. With each opportunity we’ve been lucky enough to receive came another problem to solve. Another maze to navigate. Another hurdle to climb over. Big ideas had to be modified due to limitations, often not getting be the grand ideas we intended them to be. While small progress is better than no progress at all, we strive to create art that is not only wholly representative of our ideas & creativity, but of the people & places we create in and for. But, we continue on, inspired by the community we seek to inspire with our work.

All that being said we would like to announce that last fall, All City Art Club was the proud recipients of The National Academy of Design’s Abbey Mural Prize. This prize allows us to paint a new collection of murals throughout Southside Richmond and other areas of the city needing art that is created with care & purpose. Each member of All City will create a mural and collectively we hope to also find opportunity to bring rising artists into the world of street art as part of this project. We understand what it is to not have art and all the things it can do and be, and so we present this project in hopes this art will help our collective dreams dream back at us. Thank you for your continued support. Asé.