Be a member of one of the world’s largest and most well established Art Movements
MUSEA : Intentional Creativity

Musea Museum in Many Lands

Enjoy this message from our Co-Founder and Curator,
Shiloh Sophia

YOUR INVITATION
We are inviting you to join us as a Member of MUSEA. We designed this invitation for you to learn about who we are and how your work may weave with our own.

Dear Community,

MUSEA : Intentional Creativity is a movement founded by Artists, featuring Artists, run by Artists, and funded by Artists. We are a global community rooted in a lineage of passing the tools of transformational art-making, from hand to hand. Our legacy has been in the field of education, and through exhibiting the work of thousands of women.

In May of 2020, we took a big step, founding a privately held global museum with a focus on the voices and art of creatives, educators, healers, activists, and philosophers. The founding of the museum, by Shiloh and Jonathan McCloud, through the Intentional Creativity Foundation, 501(c)3 is an evolution of work that began in the 30ies that includes making art, as well as featuring women’s art in all mediums.

Our Curator, Shiloh Sophia, a painter, writer, and teacher says this “We are inviting you to be a member of our global happening of creatives. I grew up in a women’s community rooted in a lineage of making art with intention and sharing art and stories. This approach combining mindfulness with image, word, and the science of creativity has been taught for the past 70 years and is now shared with tens of thousands around the world. I have been organizing women’s art and activism all of my life. To feel connected to sacred work that is truly making an impact in the lives of women and their families is a powerful experience shared by our members.”

One of our members, Milagros Suriano-Rivera, upon witnessing her art featured in a student museum exhibit said this: “I am sitting here watching the Artifacts of the Future Museum show! I had to pause and catch my breath! We created something so beautiful and soul-shattering that I am beyond grateful for being a part of it and so sweetly held by you all. My greatest fear has been to leave this earth and not have left a mark to prove that I was here, to be forgotten, and of no consequence. That fear has washed away with my tears.” Women like Milagros, mother of five, doing art alongside her busy life, are finding deep fulfillment through practicing and teaching Intentional Creativity. You can too!

Whether you’ve been a part of our community for a while, or are just finding your way here, becoming a Musea Member is raising your hand to say “Yes, I want to be a part of a movement and mission to raise up women’s voices and art through supporting a global museum”. This is the best way to stay connected to what we’re up to and dive deeper into your own creative self-expression.

About Becoming a MUSEA Member

CONNECT As a Musea Member, you are a part of creating the colorful fabric of the future informed by women artists. We are Painters, Poets, Sculptors, Storytellers, Dancers, Illustrators, Seamstresses, Actors – all forms of self-expression make a contribution to the life we are creating together. While many of our members are revolutionaries at heart, we aren’t spending all of our time and resources dismantling old systems, rather we are creating new structures designed to carry us into a stronger and more holistic weave.

CONTRIBUTE When you become a MUSEA Member you are contributing your own unique threads to the weave because we desire the goodness of your company. As an advocate for the importance of the self-expression of each person, we begin to shape a culture that champions the images, voices, hands, stories from many lands. And of course, the many MUSES! Who knows how soon your very own art may be featured in an upcoming show! Dream about it – because modern-day women artists getting into high-end galleries and museums, has never been likely. We are changing that.

“Since we work a lot in the realm of mythology and the mythic imagination, we have created a quantum gathering place on the ‘Mountain of Musea’. We playfully suggest that after some of the Muses were done with their experiences at Delphi, and were cast out of the Library of Alexandria, they came to the Mountain of Musea and gather with us there. After all, the word Museum comes from the root, Muse!” We have a few spells to break in our current paradigm, and a Muse-informed mentality can help with the breaking of spells that bind us. ~ Shiloh Sophia

EXPERIENCE Our memberships are designed with you in mind and heart, in consideration of the kinds of connections you have told us matter to you. In 2021, since we aren’t able to invite you to in-person gatherings yet, we have amplified the diversity of our virtual connectivity. You choose how much or how little you participate. As a member, you are part of participating in and experiencing the shows we are sharing.

In 2020 the virtual Museum launched and brought forth three shows, attended by thousands of virtual visitors. Almost monthly in 2021 Musea is featuring a powerful lineup of art, both solo one-woman shows, group shows, curated shows, juried shows, student work, and more. Join our Curators Shiloh Sophia, Amber Gould, Semerit Strachan, Jassy Watson, Anasuya Isaacs, and our Co-Curators for these incredible experiences of our virtual Museum. Meet the artists, engage in salons and enjoy powerful contemporary art, as well as our ample permanent collection. And soon, you will be able to visit our gallery of art and prints in our museum gift shop.

PARTICIPATE We have structured the MUSEA Membership levels to align with the growth stages of our members. Our memberships are highly experiential including practices of meditation, movement, music, mythic imagination, educational exploration, and the Intentional Creativity approach to making art. These experiences are brought into each of our member meetups, which we call Circles. We invite you to bring your journal, colored pens, red thread, and a cuppa tea, coffee, or champagne to each circle or show opening. Yes, some of us even wear fancy hats and scarves! Embrace making each membership experience a contribution to your own art and creative lifestyle.

“Our Art Matriarch, Sue Hoya Sellars, who is the person that really brought the practice of Intentional Creativity to me, used to say “Being an artist is so romantic!” We agree, in an era often riddled with cynicism, lack of trust and constraints created by the over-culture, choosing to be enchanted is a decision to author your own experiences.” ~ Shiloh Sophia

We have set a place at the table for you, and guess what, we also built the table. Our museum has no glass walls, no ceiling to break.

While our Museum is centered on the art and voices of women, membership is open to all genders. We have a Salon group in our private iMusea app where all genders are invited to post and share their creative process.

There are three membership levels – Circle, Society, and Guild each membership level reveals monthly experiences and many benefits. It is your choice how much or how little you participate. If you are called to a creative community or to support our common vision of sharing women’s art and voices, join us.

Just a bit of a warning offered from our existing membership,“If you are still calling the room in your house the ‘office’ you may soon be encouraged to transform it into a studio! Or if you have a guest room with very little guests, you might just take it over and begin to splash paint!”

“Gather with us.

Be a part of our movement.

While we can’t yet be together in person,

we don’t need to be isolated from one another.

Every place a MUSEA Member is, a MUSEA IS,

so we are all over the world!

Being a member is something to feel good about and

connected to as a part of each of our individual stories,

as well as our collective story.”

~ Shiloh Sophia, MUSEA Curator

All of our MUSEA Membership Levels include these benefits as well as specific Live Circles for each member level.

  • Experience a sense of connection with creatives around the world
  • Deepen your practice with Intentional Creativity®
  • Have the joy of knowing you are a part of a movement
  • Participate in art experiences with hundreds of other women
  • Freedom from feeling like you have to do it all yourself
  • Ask for support in your creative process and share your discoveries
  • Develop your own work and share your works in progress with us
  • Access to weekly touchpoints with Intentional Creativity guided by the Guild Musea Leadership.
  • Monthly group circles for Black, Indigenous, and Women of Color, who are also invited to participate in our BIWOC show for 2021.
  • All MUSEA Members and their guests are invited to join us for our monthly shows featuring artists from around the world, you are a part of making it happen
  • Opportunities to apply/submit your artwork to juried Art Calls.
  • Savings on educational offerings within Musea University
  • Connection to peer members via our iMUSEA app (desktop/mobile) to share your work and collaborate with other creatives (not on FB). Receive a red circle member badge on your profile.
  • A dedicated Membership Team to support you
  • Members-only ‘dashboard’ with access to all the benefits
  • Access to our Musea Membership Library which includes 50+ hours of Intentional Creativity programming and educational experiences to watch at your leisure
  • Education about becoming an Art Collector and savings on Original Art
  • Communication from our Curators and the Collective from our iMusea Magazine
  • Printable ‘MUSEA Member’ poster and MUSEA Membership Card (printable pdf in the Spring)
  • Invitation to our Annual November Virtual and On-Location Gathering for Members.
    In 2020 this event called “VIVID” was attended by over 250 women in 14 countries!
  • Access to attend courses designed only for our members.
  • Members are invited to Virtual Gatherings to begin and complete the year together as a community.
  • Immediate access to the 2021 Opening Class; A Creative Path with Shiloh Sophia.
  • Immediate access to the Many Muses Festival; a series of sessions including song, dance, laughter, and creativity.

Monthly Circles for Black, Indigenous, and Women of Color Members

The Art of Women of Color : A journey toward personal and collective self-definition.

We are thrilled to announce that this year we have monthly circles for our BIWOC members and students guided by Elders Semerit Strachan and Lauren Adorno-Weatherford.

In their own words…”The world needs the dissemination of the images we create. It is our drive and mission to make this happen. By the end of the year, we hope that we will have created a personal and collective vision for The Art of Women of Color.”

These calls take place on the 4th Thursday of the month alternating between 12pm and 4pm Pacific Time. Due to the nature of the calls, not all of them will be recorded, and they will be highly experiential – best attended in real-time.

NEXT STEPS to BECOME  a MEMBER TODAY

Make your choice to join the movement! Each level includes the above listed benefits as well as Virtual Intentional Creativity Circles. If you are new to our community, you only need to choose between Level One Artist and Level Two Society, as Level Three Guild is for Alumnae only.

Membership Level Choices

Scholarships for Membership: We are committed to providing everyone who wants to, the opportunity to become a Musea Member. We believe powerfully in the benefits we are offering and are committing a Membership Team to make it happen. If you know you need to be a member but cannot afford the $10 a month, go here to request a scholarship. Those who can pay full price allow us to pass on the savings to others in need. Thank you!

About your MUSEA Membership commitment: This monthly membership investment goes towards supporting Guild Staff to deliver the value of your membership. We believe the ‘value’ is far beyond the monthly amount and we hope you do too. If after 3 months you have a need to cancel, write to us and your membership will be canceled within that 30 days cycle.

Study Intentional Creativity in 2021 ALL of our MEMBERS are INVITED to consider joining us for member-only courses throughout the year. Plus, when you register for a course, we often provide savings on tuition for our members. If you are an active student, you will likely make much of your membership fees back by the savings you’ll receive throughout the year.

Starting this year of 2021, we are focusing on our MUSEA Members. All Core Curriculum for Intentional Creativity is designed for our membership. While we will continue to offer additional limited programming that does not require membership – our focus is on those who are actively practicing Intentional Creativity.

Note that just because you are already in the iMusea app as a student, that doesn’t mean you are a MUSEA Member, yet! You are a member if you are choosing one of the three membership levels above. Questions about membership? support@musea.org

If you do not wish to be a Musea Member, but would like to be invited to Exhibits and Support our Vision, here are a couple of ways:

You can sign up here to receive a complimentary subscription to Shiloh Sophia’s Red Thread Letters, monthly Intentional Creativity education, access to the Red Thread Cafe community classroom and invitations to Musea Art shows.

You are also welcome to make a one-time or monthly donation to support the work of our Intentional Creativity Foundation 501c3. You can do so here, and it is tax-deductible.

If you are new to our community, you may wish to continue reading about our approach to creativity, who we are, how you can be a part of our evolving ethos and more!

What is the Intentional Creativity approach to making art?

Our movement is rooted in an approach to making art with intention. The invitation is to make what you make with mindfulness, love, curiosity, and awareness. Our research demonstrates that when we approach our art with this level of intention, we and what we make are greatly impacted by how we are focusing. In our education and in our museum shows, the art we feature acknowledges self-expression harnessed for the good of both personal and transpersonal evolution. We are focused on making change, but also, the science and somatics of how change happens and how we can share it with one another to create a more just, peaceful, and inspired world. Intentional Creativity is not a style of ‘art-making’, rather it is making art that matters by curating our own consciousness.

While not all of our Musea Members practice art, they may admire and see the significance of making art with this approach and the positive impacts and healing potential in work made with love.

 

Consciousness + Science + Embodiment = Intentional Creativity in Action.

Who We Are
In addition to making art, we have a rich tradition of showing art and providing work for women in the arts. Our beginnings with showing women’s art starts with Shiloh’s mother, Caron McCloud who had galleries in the Bay Area in California in the 60ies and she passed her love of curation onto Shiloh.

At this time, we are a global organization and our Membership offers different ways to make Intentional Creativity a part of your art practice, share your work and your voice, and be a part of our supportive and inspiring community.

  • Movement: Community of creatives with a common vision.
  • Museum: Featuring art, story, and experiences.
  • University: Transformational education
  • Guild: Alumnae Leadership forming the “Musea Collective”, our staff and Co-Curators for the Museum and University. The Guild is composed of the graduates of our Certification programs.

How would it feel to be a part of a movement of women creatives lifting one another up throughout the world? You can!

Musea is a community of reciprocity in which each one of us is giving and receiving through embodied self-expression. We affirm that your voice, your art, your story matters, and that our stories also matter to you. And we give you the opportunities to share your work in both private community and public forums. Many of our members go on to work with us and become educators at the university.

The need for a museum like ours

The need for a museum featuring art from creatives who are conscious, caring, and contributing to a more just future is clear to us. Although we have been actively showing women’s work in both physical and virtual spaces, our museum is our newest focus. We have a physical gallery and classroom that we opened in 2016 in Sonoma, after being in Healdsburg for ten years, and Mendocino before that for three years. We opened our virtual Museum as an extension of our physical space in May of 2020. With over 20,000 already receiving our communications about art and education, with a reach in some months of over 100k, we wanted to formalize our commitment to showcasing women’s art and invite our community to join us in making it happen.

“Our community worked with us to make MUSEA possible, and to say we are over-joyed doesn’t even come close – we are blissful that we can make this happen during times like these, providing a clear focus for our membership. Artists in our community are doing their own work, supporting other artists, teaching classes, mounting exhibits, holding circles, and crafting a culture of connection. What a true honor to be a part of this movement” says Shiloh Sophia

Why Musea Membership

Be a part of the Museum of the future by becoming a member today! By joining us you will be gathering with our global community on a regular basis in our virtual circles, viewing incredible art, and practicing your own craft. While women make up over 50% of the world’s art makers, we represent less than 5% of those being exhibited in museums and galleries. With joy, we formally invite our community to bring your dreams and our collective dreams into reality by joining us as Musea members. Musea is the plural of museum, so we don’t think of ourselves as a building or a website housing art, rather, everywhere a member is, there a Musea exists.

A community is made up of many members, while a movement is made up of many members moving towards a common vision. Shiloh Sophia says this: “Since I have had the gift and the challenges of creating community all of my life and have witnessed many different patterns unfold. I have seen when we have thrived, when our connectivity has been less engaged, and when we are the most in love with life, one another, and our work. Here’s what I see: Our community is most alive when we are focused on a common vision that benefits us individually and contributes to the transformation of others and the planet.

The Museum and our Membership was created to focus our attention and intention on projects that literally light up our hearts and bodies and to create a structure for that to happen. We are only 18 years into a hundred-year plan to revolutionize the work of women in the arts, and you can be a part of it! In essence, we are formalizing our commitment to a more just world and to powerful relationships with self-expression at the heart of our connection. And you are invited.

 

We Gather Around What Matters to Us and Our World

ARTIVISM We work together on activism and initiatives that matter to us and our community. The United Nations, 2015

EXPERIENCE We travel together to sacred sites and experience culture and creativity. Black Madonna of Paris, 2014

COLLABORATION: We co-create to share our gifts of song, speaking and ceremony. Annual Musea Gathering, Virtual 2020

QUANTUM: Our members join together every week to connect, create, and share. Color of Woman Virtual Graduation, 2020

CELEBRATION: For over 10 years we have met several times a year. Color of Woman Graduation, Santa Cruz, CA 2019

CONNECTION: Our members share the experience of circle and Red Thread Connection. Paris, France, 2012

Be a part of MUSEA’s ADVOCACY and ETHOS

If you often feel like you can’t make a big enough contribution to the world, to women, to earth and what really matters to you…if you often feel like you want to be a part of something bigger and more meaningful that honors YOU and others in the world… this is for you. Imagine yourself as a part of a global movement, and we have been waiting for you.

Musea’s way of working through art and education is philanthropic in nature – our approach is to discover how we can serve and support our members in their self-expression, storytelling, and connection to our community of creatives. By choosing to support your own self-expression, you automatically support Musea as a whole. We aren’t inviting you to come because we need the support – we are inviting you to join us so that YOU can be supported in what matters to you as a creative. We are inviting you to practice your craft, share it with us, refine it over time, bring it into your activism and your soul work, to practice Intentional Creativity. In many models of service work, there are the givers, those who have, and those given to receivers, those who don’t have as much.

At Musea, we understand that we are all givers and receivers at different phases of our evolution. We believe that as we become more connected to one another, more self-expressed, and have our stories heard, we heal. As we heal, the love and healing we have to share begins to overflow and impact the community as a whole. When our Intentional Creativity graduates complete and join the Guild as a part of MUSEA, they return bearing their gifts and become a part of the colorful fabric of our community.

We intend to finance our revolution, by joining us, you enter a relationship with us that creates the incredible future that we know is possible when human beings are self-expressed and supported.

 

We are a Community Curating Consciousness, Culture, Creativity, and Connection.

MUSEA is working towards gender equality, diversity, and justice for women Artists.

Gender Equality and Diversity of Representation

We at Musea know that we have a lot of work to do to balance the gender inequality and challenges with equal representation for women of all cultures. The statistics speak for themselves. Our Black, Indigenous and Women of Color (BIWOC) Leadership team is working together to bring art forward from the least represented groups. Our membership receives BIWOC specific communications and breakout groups. These statistics are according to the National Museum of Women in the Arts.

One of the ways we are working towards creating justice in the arts is through educating guides, teachers, coaches, and leaders to bring the Intentional Creativity approach to those who can benefit from the work. We have a long way to go, but here is a map of our over 400 educators – many have their own Musea studio space, and some have Founded Musea Centers in places like Australia, Mexico, and the United States.

Since our foundation started in the US, we know it will take some time to bring education to other places in the world. With your presence, the work will continue to expand.

Paint, drums and Red Thread are regular materials and tools we use to create, connect and curate our own consciousness

A Red Thread Runs Through us by Artist Phyllis Taylor

LEGENDS of the Red Thread

We called you to this circle, and you called us to this circle.

You are already connected to us, as we are connected to you.

You have your own unique piece of red thread that is yours.

We witness your story and you witness our story.

Painting: A Red Thread Runs Through Us – Phyllis Ann Taylor