For Immediate Release
October 29, 2020
The African American Arts Alliance
to host 2020 Black Excellence Awards
Online ceremony honoring Black artists to be held November 10th
Chicago, IL—The African American Arts Alliance (AAAA) will host the 20th annual Black Excellence Awards, an evening celebrating Black artists, Black voices, and Black stories across all artistic disciplines, on November 10, 2020 at 7pm. The 2020 virtual celebration will honor selected honorees who have exhibited artistic excellence throughout the past year. The live ceremony, to be broadcast on Facebook Live at https://www.facebook.com/aaaachicago, is free and open to the public.
“The Black Excellence Awards have been honoring Black artists for the past 20 years. This year, even though we aren’t able to gather in the same room, the celebration will go on. In this difficult year for so many people, we need to uplift each other as we celebrate Black achievement and come together to remember the importance of the arts and artists in the Chicago community,” comments AAAA Board Chair and Black Ensemble Theater Founder and CEO Jackie Taylor.
The Black Excellence Awards provides recognition of professional African American artists for their achievements of excellence and creativity in the arts. The committee has evaluated performances and works by artists across all artistic disciplines that were created or produced in the past season.
In previous years, several artists in each category were nominated by committee members then voted upon. Due to the shift caused by the pandemic, the nomination and selection process was streamlined. There is no slate of nominees, rather a single awardee, identified as having exhibited artistic distinction, for each category. The awardees will be announced soon. More information is available at https://www.aaaachicago.org/2020-black-excellence-awards.
About the African American Arts Alliance
In 1997 a group of Chicago’s leading African American artists and arts organizations came together and formed a new organization; incorporated as the African American Arts Alliance of Chicago. This organization embraced the history of the original 1977 Chicago Black Theater Alliance while expanding their scope to include diverse groups of artistic mediums which includes theaters, dance, music, literature, film, visual arts organizations, and individuals.
The mission of the African American Art Alliance is to increase public awareness, interaction, communication and development of African American arts organizations and artists within the city of Chicago.
# # #
