Terra Foundation for American Art

Chicago Avant-Garde:
An Interview with Curator
Liesl Olson

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Devour the Land:
An Interview with Curator Makeda Djata Best

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Women in Abstraction:
An Interview with Curator Christine Macel

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Chicago Partnerships:
Supporting Arts and Culture in the City

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Grantees Announced:
Re-envisioning Permanent Collections

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The Terra Foundation is dedicated to fostering exploration, understanding, and enjoyment of the visual arts of the US for national and international audiences.

Our grant program, art collection, and initiatives encourage dialogue among many voices on American art.

Grant & Fellowship Opportunities

Announcements & Deadlines

Convening Grants: Applications Due December 10

Grant funding is available for programs that foster exchange, such as workshops, symposia, and colloquia, and that address critical issues facing the field as well as advance research and scholarship in American art.
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Research Travel Grants: Applications Due January 15

Research Travel Grants provide support to doctoral, postdoctoral, and senior scholars from both the US and outside the US for research topics dedicated to the art and visual culture of the United States prior to 1980.
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Terra Foundation Collection

The Terra Foundation collection of American art includes over 750 paintings, prints, drawings, photographs, and sculptures by 242 artists.

Painting of a boy and a cow, with buildings in the background and a black sky.

Yasuo Kuniyoshi, Boy with Cow, 1921

An impressionist painting of a hillside. The foreground depicts a green and brown hillside, and a small village and trees is in the background.

Theodore Robinson, From the Hill, Giverny, c. 1889–92

Impressionist paining of a woman and a girl in a small boat leaning over the side to look into the water. Two ducks are floating on the multicolored blue water.

Mary Cassatt, Summertime, 1894

Landscape painting of a river flowing through a field with haystacks dotting the field. A dark, gray cloud is at the top of the painting over a light blue sky.

Martin Johnson Heade, Newburyport Marshes: Approaching Storm, c. 1871

Painting of a group of people having a picnic in a clearing in the forest.

Lilly Martin Spencer, The Home of the Red, White, and Blue, c. 1867–68

Painting of letters, newspapers, notebook, a feather, stamp, and other memorabilia held to a brown bulletin board by pinned, thin red tape.

John Frederick Peto, Old Time Letter Rack, 1894

Painting of a red brick building with the word "BAR-B-QUE" on a sign above the doorway. Black individuals are seated at a counter seen inside the open door and look into an open window where a figure with a tall, white chefs hat is seen in front of meat roasting on four rotisseries.

Jacob Lawrence, Bar-b-que, 1942

Impressionist painting of a street scene in Paris. Two individuals and a dog are in the foreground, and a domed building is in the background. The sky is gray and cloudy.

Henry Ossawa Tanner, Les Invalides, Paris, 1896

View the Collection Loans and Permissions

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News

Painting that is primarily red vertical marking painted over an image underneath, which appears only as blue, yellow, and green marks beneath the red.

Terra Foundation Awards $2.5 Million to US Arts & Culture Organizations for Permanent Collection Projects

May 4, 2021

Clare Muñana and Huey Copeland

Terra Foundation Adds Huey Copeland and Clare Muñana to Board of Directors

December 8, 2020

A person looks into a plexiglass case housing teal-colored ceramics.

Five Foundations Commit $16 Million to Black, Latinx, Asian, and Indigenous Arts Organizations

September 24, 2020