Letter from Our President & CEO, Winter 2023

In late 2020, the Terra Foundation initiated a strategic planning process that began with deep listening and learning from our partners and peers within the fields of American art and philanthropy. We embarked on this work acknowledging the imperative and collective responsibility to question existing narratives of American art and to broaden the range of the stories we tell to ensure that the full richness and complexity of American art are represented. We also understood the need to rethink the methods, models, and systems that structure both our own philanthropic work and practices in the field. Only through such reassessments can we address inequities in funding and support systemic changes in American art and in museum practice more broadly.

Our planning process focused on reimagining our approach to supporting the American art field and developing a new conception of the mission, vision, and values that guide our work. Reflecting our commitment to partnership and collaboration, we engaged in dialogue with partners and philanthropic peers to better understand the needs of the field. Ultimately, our strategic planning clarified the nature of our vision and values and culminated in our new mission: In partnership with organizations and individuals locally and globally, the Terra Foundation fosters intercultural dialogues and encourages transformative practices to expand narratives of American art.

In 2020, we provided relief grants to institutions worldwide that were impacted by the unprecedented nature of the Covid-19 pandemic. We funded programs, staff, and general operations related to American art. In response to institutions renewing their focus on developing exhibitions and installations drawn from their own collections, we launched Re-envisioning Permanent Collections, a grant program that supported organizations delving deeply into their collections with the aim of revealing the multiplicity of artworks and voices that have shaped, in the past and up through the present, the artistic and cultural heritage of the United States. These grants provided funding for the planning and implementation of permanent collection reinstallations and for the development of temporary exhibitions drawn from museum collections. Over two rounds of grantmaking, the foundation supported 80 institutions—including 43 first-time Terra Foundation partners—across 34 states and 70 cities in the U.S., with $5.6 million in Re-envisioning Permanent Collections grants.

In the summer of 2022, we embarked on a new strategic direction aligned with our new mission. Expanded narratives of American art are now at the center of each project we support. To encourage inclusive and equitable approaches to scholarship and learning, our strategic framework focuses on the people, content, and practices associated with each project in local and global contexts.

We encourage all supported projects to focus on the diversity of voices to be represented and the expanded range of content to be presented, as well as the application of transformative practices to the research, development, and sharing of each project. This commitment to inclusive and equitable practices across project development and implementation is intended to contribute to positive structural change within the field across cultural institutions worldwide.

It is important that our work encourages the telling of stories reflective of the multivocality and complexity of American art history. We are continuing to realign our responsive grant programs in these new directions, and our strategic framework is now prioritized in the convenings, exhibitions, and collections programs. We will keep testing these strategies and approaches and will modify program requirements based on feedback from our community of partners and peers.

Our approach to the foundation’s own collection of American art also embodies our new mission. The Terra Collection-in-Residence initiative, a loan partnership program with university and research museums worldwide launched in 2022, invites museums to broaden and deepen the stories they tell with their collections. Loans from the foundation’s collection are intended to provide opportunities for interdisciplinary research and teaching with American art and to encourage the presentation of expanded scholarship and pedagogies.

In our efforts to work co-generatively, we continue to seek out strategic and philanthropic partnerships worldwide to support projects that reimagine the histories, systems, and practices of American art. We are also committed to an ongoing process of learning from our partners in order to adapt our strategic directions so that they best reflect the needs of our communities of partners.

Guided by our values and vision to illuminate diverse histories, inspire present connections, and create equitable futures, we support partners who use equitable practices and advance inclusive narratives to redefine American art. We are delighted to share examples of these supported projects with you in the foundation report featuring our grantmaking over three fiscal years, beginning in July 2019 and ending in June 2022.

Sharon Corwin
President & CEO