Chicago, IL—The Terra Foundation for American Art announced today that more than $8.4 million was awarded in fiscal year 2015 (July 1, 2014–June 30, 2015) for nearly 70 initiatives and partnerships worldwide, including:
- A new visiting professorship at the University of Oxford;
- An international essay prize;
- The symposium “Wordstruck: American Artists as Readers, Writers, and Literati” at Maria Curie-Skłodowska University, in Lublin, Poland; and
- Several exhibitions, such as Warhol Underground, at the Centre Pompidou-Metz, and Man Ray—Human Equations: A Journey from Mathematics to Shakespeare, at the Ny Carlsberg Glypotek, in Copenhagen, and the Israel Museum, in Jerusalem.
“When we began our grantmaking program ten years ago, our objective was to foster the exploration, understanding, and enjoyment of the visual arts of the United States among audiences across the globe and use those experiences to stimulate rich cross-cultural dialogues,” explained Terra Foundation President & CEO Elizabeth Glassman. “The wide range of grants awarded in the past fiscal year demonstrate significant progress in achieving that goal.”
The three-day “Wordstruck” symposium, for instance, explored from a literary perspective how artists’ thoughts shape the development of American culture and society. Through six keynote lectures and 26 shorter presentations, scholars challenged the stereotype that artists do not create new ideas but merely interpret, in visual form, those of others.
“I have delivered papers in Europe before, but this was a rare opportunity to spend time with a core group of Americanists from Italy, Greece, Romania, Germany, Ukraine, Slovakia, Canada, Poland, the UK, and the US, and really listen and talk about the history of American art from different cultural perspectives,” said Liza Kirwin, deputy director of the Archives of American Art. “I came away from the event with a better understanding of how American art history is situated in both academic departments and individual mindsets.”
“This is just one example of the meaningful impact of our work internationally,” stated Amy Zinck, Executive Vice President at the Terra Foundation. “Since 2005 we’ve awarded more than $66 million for more than 500 similarly thought-provoking projects in countries around the world, including Australia, Brazil, China, Israel, Japan, Russia, and South Korea.”
Another example is the Terra Summer Residency, which since 2001 has brought together doctoral scholars of American Art and emerging artists from institutions worldwide for a nine-week fellowship program in the historic village of Giverny, France. The residency provides an opportunity for participants to widen their academic and creative horizons, explore varying cultural perspectives, and forge lifelong exchanges and professional networks.
According to Dr. Sarah Monks, lecturer in art history at the University of East Anglia and senior advisor at the 2015 Terra Summer Residency, “Through its fellowships, the Terra Foundation supports an impressive range of excellent scholarship on American art and enables international scholars to connect and collaborate with each other in an extraordinary way. As a result, the Terra Foundation has helped make American art one of the most exciting and innovative fields in art history today.”
Terra Foundation for American Art
Established in 1978, the Terra Foundation for American Art is dedicated to fostering the exploration, understanding, and enjoyment of the visual arts of the United States. With financial resources of more than $350 million, an exceptional collection of American art from the colonial era to 1945, and an expansive grant program, it is one of the leading foundations focused on American art, supporting academic programs, exhibitions, publications, and research worldwide.
