佩珀代因大学 recently received a $2.49 million grant from 礼来基金公司 to support 段落, a five-year project at the 弗雷德里克·r·韦斯曼艺术博物馆. 段落 will produce four art exhibitions focused on major life occasions—birth, coming of age, marriage, and death—and explore them from a multitude of diverse religious perspectives. The grant will also advance Pepperdine's outreach efforts with K–12 schools and the local community.

安德里亚Gyorody

“This extraordinary grant will allow the Weisman to not only develop an ambitious series of exhibitions exploring religious identity and belonging through contemporary art, but to also broaden our engagement with cultural institutions, K–12 schools, and houses of worship across greater Los Angeles,” says 安德里亚Gyorody, director of the Weisman Museum. “We are thrilled to be entering a period of transformational growth anchored by open-hearted interfaith dialogue and a core belief in the power of art to bring people of all backgrounds together.”

段落 will specifically be funded through Lilly Endowment’s Religion and Cultural Institutions Initiative, which encourages museums and other cultural organizations as they attempt to provide fair, accurate, and balanced portrayals of the role religion plays in the United States.

Gyorody developed the concept of 段落 over the course of 2024, with the support of a planning grant and with guidance from an advisory committee of external artists and curators alongside Pepperdine faculty and staff in art, art history, religion, spiritual life, and student life. This year she will begin selecting and commissioning both local and international artists to create works for the four separate exhibitions. Gyorody hopes to recruit a cohort of voices from a number of religious perspectives to contribute to the project. In doing so, 段落 will come to bear significant cultural weight, providing viewers insights into both shared and distinct religious experiences.

“We are a museum at the edge of one of the most diverse cities in the world,” says Gyorody. “Our outreach goal is twofold: to bring new audiences into our museum, including people who have not felt welcomed into contemporary art spaces, and to give all of our visitors the opportunity to learn about a range of religious practices and communities that might otherwise be invisible to them. The themes of these exhibitions speak to everyone, regardless of belief or affiliation, providing crucial common ground for what we hope are diverse and engaged visitors.”

Beyond the exhibitions, the grant will also fund a new position at Pepperdine—a museum fellow devoted to K–12, community, and church outreach. This individual will be immersed in the local area, forging important opportunities to share the art of 段落 outside the Weisman. To assist with this effort, Gyorody is partnering with other institutions throughout Los Angeles to host related installations and public programs, and will also work closely with the new fellow and commissioned artists to develop resources such as scholarly books and flexible K-12 curriculum that can be adapted for church groups, allowing each of the four exhibitions to create an impact beyond the walls of the museum, in the city of Los Angeles and even farther afield.

“Our museum is located in Malibu, and it's challenging for some people to visit us,” Gyorody explains. “We can use this grant to go out into the world rather than requiring people to come to us, and the materials we produce in conjunction with each exhibition will have a much longer lifespan and the potential for even greater impact than the exhibitions themselves.”

佩珀代因大学 was one of 33 institutions around the United States to receive funding from the Religion and Cultural Institutions Initiative, and it was the only institution in the latest round of grants to be located on the West Coast.

“The United States is widely considered to be one of the most religiously diverse nations today,” says Christopher L. Coble, Lilly Endowment’s vice president for religion. “Many individuals and families trust museums and other cultural institutions and visit them to learn about their communities and the world. We are excited to support these organizations as they embark on projects to help visitors understand and appreciate the diverse religious beliefs, practices, and perspectives of their neighbors and others in communities around the globe.”