The nonprofit formerly known as Art Alliance Austin is relaunching as A3, focusing on fundraising to support the arts community. Their official debut celebration is this Thursday, Sept. 12th from 7-10pm at Canopy Projects Gallery.
Join us for entertainment: jazz, samba dancing, opera, free drinks from our sponsors, and information about A3. Learn about the projects A3 wants to support and information about what a local arts agency is and does and what they can expect in the future.
A brief bit about the organizations history below from the Chronicle:
“After pausing programming at the onset of the pandemic, long-running nonprofit Art Alliance Austin is prepping a re-emergence under new name A3. Led by newly appointed Executive Director Laura Esparza, the organization has announced plans to limit event planning and prioritize fundraising.
The organization has undergone numerous changes since its founding in 1911. Originally known as the Texas Fine Arts Association, it hosted art shows and craft fairs in the 1950s and even used Laguna Gloria as its own exhibition space before it became a private museum.
Speaking to the Chronicle Tuesday, Esparza said the rebrand came after an external analysis suggested the nonprofit focus on a single mission. “The organization was trying to find itself by doing lots of different things, but one of the suggestions was that it focused on fundraising to support the arts community,” she said.
Esparza recently retired from the City of Austin, where she oversaw 11 museums and cultural centers in her 17 years as division manager of the Museums and Cultural Programs Division for the Austin Parks and Recreation Department. Before that, she worked for an arts council in Silicon Valley, where she hosted a quarterly roundtable of arts nonprofit leaders to share stories and structure approaches.
’I [have] long felt that Austin arts deserved more support,’ Esparza said. In leaving her government role, she saw an opportunity to revisit the work she did at the California nonprofit, which fundraises and re-grants money to various arts groups.
’In lots of different ways, Austin doesn’t have the infrastructure that other cities have for supporting the arts,’ the executive director said. “Government can’t do it all. So it’s time to really build some of the civic pillars of a sustainable arts ecosystem.””