This week, the Rose Art Museum announced in a press release that it has acquired two first-time grants of $100,000 each from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The former will support a new exhibition opening in September 2015, Lisa Yuskavage: The Brood, and the latter will support the activities of the Academic Projects Program.

The Academic Projects Program has been in place since Director of the Rose Art Museum Christopher Bedford began his term as director at the Rose. It is a program that aims to link academics with the exhibits on view.

Last semester, the Rose Projects featured the work of German artists Charline von Heyl and Wols. Both were creating art at radically different time periods but the exhibit connected the two in an academically-charged way. The Rose Project opening for this season on Wednesday, is titled 1914: Magnus Plessen. The exhibit will place Plessen’s work next to historical materials that are tied to his work.

In the past, the program has been coordinated by various staff at the Rose, but now the Rose will also be hiring a curator who will specifically deal with the Academic Projects Program. “The advantage of bringing together a curator of Academic Projects is that the entire initiative will have leadership under one person,” explained Bedford in an interview with the Justice.

The curator will work closely with the Mandel Center for the Humanities, and, as the Rose’s press release describes, “carry with it both teaching and curatorial responsibilities ... The curator’s main task will be to integrate and bind all phases of the Museum’s creative and scholarly activities.”

According to Bedford, funding for the activities for the program will come directly form The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the funding for the hiring of the curator will come from the Rose.

Bedford told the Justice that the curator position was posted over the summer and the applicant pool has since narrowed down to 20 individuals. “The idea would be to have somebody on board by January of 2015,” said Bedford, “unless someone comes into focus very, very quickly. We just want to make sure we hire the right person.”

The press release describes the exhibit Lisa Yuskavage: The Brood, writing, “The exhibition will survey 25 years of painting by this artist whose work traverses styles, theories, thresholds and histories, advancing a boldly unique vision for the figurative tradition in painting and the potential relationship of the media to contemporary culture.” It also notes that Yuskavage will have a residency at the Rose, during which she will mentor artists and speak about her work. Bedford said that the Rose has already applied for additional grants for supplementary funding for this exhibit. “It should be a very well funded exhibition,” said Bedford.