Aspen Art Museum announces AIR, a landmark 10-year, $20 million initiative dedicated to investing in artists as leaders. AIR will culminate in a major new international summit that will take place every summer in Aspen. 

Over the next decade, AIR will center art as a path towards new futures with artists at the helm. In response to an era of accelerating change, AIR will commission ambitious research, performances, and artworks and play host to ideas and people that can reshape the ways we relate to one another and address collective challenges. 

AIR builds on the legacy of Aspen Art Museum, which was founded by artists in 1976. Its year-round program is committed to long-term creative research converging around a public festival and an artist-led retreat. The festival will unfold across the landscapes and institutions of Aspen’s mountain community with a thematic series of keynotes, dialogues, and commissions. The closed-door AIR retreat will bring together a cohort of leaders from across the arts, sciences, industry, and technology to generate new ways of thinking.