People
Moira Brennan
Moira Brennan is an independent arts worker, supporting social-justice oriented artists and start-ups through strategic dialogue, fundraising planning, message crafting and simple, informed accompaniment. From 2002 to 2023 she was the director of the MAP Fund, a national artist-services and funding agency that provides support for contemporary performing artists of all abilities and backgrounds, whose work challenges canon and convention. Under Moira, the MAP Fund redistributed $23 million to more than one-thousand performance projects in every region of the United States and internationally. At MAP she also co-designed, with David Sheingold, the Scaffolding for Practicing Artist program, which established a new model for highly tailored, horizontal one-to-one artist support practices and has now served more than 300 artists in performance, literature, filmmaking, and multi-genre practices. Under her direction, the MAP Fund was one of seven national arts organizations that, in 2020, formed Artist Relief, raising and distributing $25 million to artists impacted by the COVID pandemic. Over her career, Moira has spoken widely on the complex interplay between creativity, art, power, and money in contemporary culture and philanthropy. A former editor at Ms. magazine, Moira has written about arts and social justice for a variety of publications. She is the former board chair of Movement Research, and a proud member of the Board of Directors at UnionDocs and the Arts for Living Circle at Abrons Art Center. She is a graduate of New York University Tisch School of the Arts.
