Canvas with shades of dark colors, including green, grey, and blue.

Jessica Winters, born in Makkovik, Nunatsiavut, Newfoundland and Labrador, in 1996, Lichen (Hopedale 1), 2023, Acrylic on canvas, 91,5 x 91,5 cm, MMFA, purchase, the Paradis family fund in memory of Claude Paradis, Photo MMFA.

Supported Projects

The Terra Foundation for American Art awarded 54 grants this summer, amounting to a total of over $3.2 million of support for strategic initiatives, collections projects, convenings, and Art Design Chicago projects that broaden understandings of American art worldwide through collaboration, dialogue, and exchange.

Supported projects include the Montreal Museum of Fine Art’s (MMFA) collection reinstallation ᐆᒻᒪᖁᑎᒃ uummaqutik: essence of life, UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive’s (BAMPFA) collection-based exhibition Routed West: African American Quilts in California After 1940, and BRIC Arts Media’s convening “Disability Artistry Dialogues as a Current in American Art: Conversation, Convening, and Access Praxis at BRIC.”

ᐆᒻᒪᖁᑎᒃ uummaqutik: essence of life is a reinstallation of MMFA’s collection of Inuit arts in two newly designed galleries. The reinstallation is organized by Nunavimmiuq artist and curator asinnajaq, in collaboration with an Inuit advisory committee and featured artists. The reinstallation highlights Inuit sensibilities, histories, and knowledges and considers the different ways Inuit connect with all forms of life, including Sila: air, water, earth, and fire.

ᐆᒻᒪᖁᑎᒃ uummaqutik: essence of life amplifies the practices and legacies of both established and emerging Inuit artists, honoring and celebrating artistic excellence as well as diverse Indigenous cultural continuity across circumpolar communities,” said Mary-Dailey Desmarais, Chief Curator at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. “This new presentation of the MMFA’s Inuit art collection foregrounds multiple perspectives and histories of the northernmost regions of North America, addressing centuries of Eurocentric views of Inuit arts with culturally informed contexts to encourage deeper understanding. The installation brings together prints, drawings, paintings, textiles, and sculpture, and will also feature the MMFA’s first acquisitions of Inuit ceramics, photography, installation, and media art. Guided by a shared belief in the transformative power of art and a demonstrated commitment to genuine inclusion, ᐆᒻᒪᖁᑎᒃ uummaqutik: essence of life marks a turning point in the museum’s critical engagement with Inuit arts.”

Multi-colored quilt with shades of orange, pink, green, blue, and black.

Image: Sherry Ann Byrd, Pieced 1984, finished 1987, Richmond, California, Irene Bankhead, Quilted 1987, Oakland, California, Untitled (Double Medallion, Half-Square Triangles), cotton, polyester, cotton/polyester blend, hand and machined pieced, hand quilted, 87 x 75 in. (221.0 x 190.5 cm), OBJ0426, bequest of the Eli Leon Living Trust, BAMPFA, photo: Kevin Candland.

BAMPFA’s Routed West: African American Quilts in California After 1940 traces the movement of quilts in the context of the Second Great Migration, presenting stories that interweave resilience, creativity, self-determination, and beauty in ways that define a distinctive period of African American quilt history and illuminate the social ties sustained between quilts and Black life. Millions of working-class African Americans sought greater economic opportunities and freedom outside the American South from 1940 to 1970, carrying quilts as functional objects and physical reminders of the homes they had left behind. Consisting of approximately 115 artworks by 80 women and three men, this exhibition examines the tradition of quilt-making in African American lives for various functions, including pleasure, livelihood, remembrance, comfort, and collective care.

“The exhibition’s background is the Second Great Migration, when thousands of Black migrants fled the South’s oppressive racial environment for better opportunities,” said Elaine Yau, BAMPFA Associate Curator and Academic Liaison. “But the central story is about quilts moving across these distances to California—creating links between kin, carrying memory, serving as sites for beauty and ingenuity, and bringing this iconic medium westward.

“While planning this exhibition, I have been keenly aware of how quiltmaking has thrived outside of art museums because of its historical denigration as ‘craft’ and ‘women’s work.’ These hierarchies have lingered even in past attempts to include quilts in fine art spaces. In its effort to amplify quilt stories, BAMPFA views itself as a co-steward of this important collection, working alongside contemporary quiltmakers, local guilds, historians, and descendent families to interpret the quilts’ significance for audiences today . . . [and] ultimately helping to reshape what we understand as American Art.”

Image: November 2023—CAO Collective x Yao Xiao “Care Dictionary” comics workshop and community installation, hosted at BRIClab Contemporary Art residency studio. Image courtesy of Chinese Artists and Organizers (CAO) Collective.

BRIC Arts Media’s convening “Disability Artistry Dialogues as a Current in American Art: Conversation, Convening, and Access Praxis at BRIC” focuses on the experiences, perspectives, and works of disabled artists. The event features an exhibition of artworks by early-career disabled artists participating in the 2023–24 BRIClab Contemporary Art residency program, performances and/or workshops, and focused talks examining structures within non-profit organizations and residency programs, their limitations, and how change can happen. Offering hybrid, virtual, and in-person programs, the symposium is designed to provide a safe and comfortable space to explore the perspectives of disabled artists rooted in the legacies of movement-building, advocacy, caregiving, and creativity in disability justice and disability artistry communities.

“BRIC has a long history of supporting and nurturing artists at all stages of their careers, providing them with valuable space and resources to work and show their art,” said BRIC President Wes Jackson. “This symposium comes out of the work we’ve done to make our BRIC lab residency program more accessible for disabled artists and to create a community of collaboration, care, and interdependence. We are honored to showcase the remarkable work and process of these artists, and to uplift their place in the field of American art.”

For all foundation grants awarded, and for more information about these grants, please see the grants database. For information about the additional grants awarded in June 2024, please see the Chicago Grants Awarded story.

Summer 2024 Grants Awarded

Strategic Initiatives

Association of Art Museum Directors, New York, New York, This project documents specific experiences of censorship and how widespread it is in the art museum field. The project examines how these experiences differ based on region, type of museum (e.g., university vs. private), etc. The survey also attempts to collect instances of state and self-censorship and determine whether, and if so to what extent, a chilling effect has been created among art museums. A survey analysis narrativizes these findings and gestures toward next steps for addressing the issues it documents. This project aims to make the field aware of the current polarization to be found across the United States and how censorship and threats to free speech can and will affect cultural organization’s missions, $25,000

Ateliers Médicis, Clichy-sous-Bois, France, to support Clichycago, a residency program at Ateliers Médicis in the Parisian suburb of Clichy-Montfermeil offering fellowships for Chicago-based artists from the city’s South Side, $100,000

Eaux Fortes, Strasbourg, France, at the 15th Biennale des Arts de Dakar, themed “The Wake,” to support public programs delving into global questions of environment, race, and healing, $25,000

Floating Museum, Chicago, Illinois to support the development and pilot phase over three years of the Burroughs Residency, a new residency opportunity in Chicago for local and international artists that is highly tailored to the residents’ research needs and interests as well as to the interests of local cultural organizations that interact with the artists, $285,000

Hampton University Museum, Hampton, Virginia, to support via a three-year grant the research and assessment project, Analyze, Assess, and Resituate the International Review of African American Art, examining the journal’s history, structure, and audience over the course of its run, 1972–2020, $150,000

Whitechapel Gallery, London, United Kingdom, to support a three-day residential convening conceived by Gilane Tawadros, “Detour to the Imaginary,” which brings together twelve artists, curators, writers, and philosophers in conversation to explore the role of the contemporary art institution in the twenty-first century, $33,000

Collections

Alaska Native Heritage Center, Anchorage, Alaska, to support Ataqaanusix Exhibit, a collection reinstallation that focuses on Alaska’s five regional Indigenous cultural groups, 11 subgroups, 22 languages, and more than 220 tribes, $75,000

Anchorage Museum, Anchorage, Alaska, to support the development of As the Plover Flies (a reference to the migratory flight of the Pacific golden plover, or kōlea, which travels between Hawaiʻi and Alaska annually), an exhibition that draws on cultural belongings and contemporary art from the collections of the Anchorage Museum, Honolulu Museum of Art, and Bishop Museum, $75,000

Ashmolean Museum of Art & Archaeology, Oxford, United Kingdom, to support the continued development of a framework and methodology for engaging and building relationships with Native and Indigenous communities in regard to the display, interpretation, and accessibility of the museum’s collection, with particular attention to Powhatan’s Mantle, $75,000

ASU Art Museum, Tempe, Arizona, to support Tierras Reimaginadas/Reimagined Territories: Migration, a collection-based exhibition at the Arizona State University Art Museum featuring loans from the Art Bridges Foundation and the Gochman Family Collection, $75,000

Boston Athenaeum, Boston, Massachusetts, to support the development of Allan Rohan Crite: Neighborhood Liturgy (working title), a collection-based exhibition at the Boston Athenaeum (with a compressed version potentially traveling to an HBCU venue) that focuses on the artistic virtuosity of the community leader, mentor, and artist Allan Rohan Crite, $75,000

Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, California, to support Black Artists in California: 19th Century to Now, a multimedia collection-based exhibition opening at the Crocker Art Museum after years of community planning and research. Surveying the profound contributions of African American artists to the history of California art, and including thematic sections that cut across time and representation, the project shares archival materials, oral histories, short videos of three living artists, and includes a scholarly catalogue, $75,000

Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Arkansas, to support the development, with Native American artists, community members, and academic specialists, of a reinstallation plan for the entirety of Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art’s current galleries in anticipation of the museum’s expansion, $50,000

Delaware Art Museum, Wilmington, Delaware, to support Jazz Age Illustration, a collection-based exhibition at the Delaware Art Museum that surveys the art of popular illustration in the United States between 1919 and 1942, a period marked by increased opportunities in illustration for women and artists of color, $50,000

Des Moines Art Center, Des Moines, Iowa, to support the development of Whisper to a Scream: Women Artists and Minimalism, a collection-based exhibition at the Des Moines Art Center, $63,000

Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, San Francisco, California, to support the reinstallation of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco’s de Young Museum’s permanent exhibition of Native American art after years of planning with a team of Native scholars and an advisory committee, $75,000

Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, Poughkeepsie, New York, to support planning with a diverse group of advisors for a reinstallation of the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center’s Founding Galleries, $75,000

Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, Santa Fe, New Mexico, to support Tewa Country: Tewa Interpretations of “O’Keeffe Country,” a collection-based exhibition at the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum co-curated by a collective of Tewa artists, knowledge bearers, and community members that promotes awareness and recognition of Tewa art, culture, and landscapes, $75,000

Gilcrease Museum, Tulsa, Oklahoma, to support the development of rotating exhibitions for the dedicated collection galleries in the Gilcrease Museum’s new facility, $75,000

Minnesota Museum of American Art, Saint Paul, Minnesota, to support Here, Now: Stories of Land and Stars, a collection reinstallation project at the Minnesota Museum of American Art’s newly expanded space in downtown St. Paul, $75,000

Musée des Beaux-Arts de Montréal, Quebec, Canada, to support the reinstallation of the Montreal Museum of Fine Art’s multimedia collection of Inuit arts in two newly designed galleries around the theme of uummaqutik (“essence of life” in Inuktitut), $75,000

Museo de Arte de Puerto Rico, San Juan, Puerto Rico, to support the development, with two guest curators and community representatives, of a conceptual framework for the complete reinstallation of the Museo de Arte de Puerto Rico (San Juan)’s permanent collection galleries to revisit the canon of art in Puerto Rico, $75,000

Museums at Washington and Lee University, Lexington, Virginia, to support Stephanie Shih: LONG TIME NO SEE 好久不見, an exhibition derived from the Museums at Washington and Lee University’s first artist’s residency, $50,000

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts, to support the collaborative development of new narratives and interpretive frameworks for Revolutionizing Icons: Reimagining the 18th-Century Art of the Americas Galleries at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, a reinstallation of the first floor of the Art of the Americas wing, $60,000

National Museum of the American Indian, Washington, D.C., to support a comprehensive visitor and Indigenous advisory group evaluation of an expansive “Belongings” framework and several exhibition subthemes, $75,000

New-York Historical Society, New York, New York, to support the development at the New-York Historical Society of Leading Nations: Gayë́twahgeh and Sagoyewatha (working title), a collection-based exhibition shaped by Haudenosaunee history and culture bearers, $75,000

Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art, Logan, Utah, to support the Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art at Utah State University’s Intermountain: Cultural Identity, Assimilation, and Repatriation, a collection-based exhibition being shaped by the expertise of Dr. Farina King (a Navajo/Diné author of a book on Intermountain), $72,000

Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to support the continued planning with a diverse advisory group and institutional and community partners for an expansive, multivocal reinstallation and reinterpretation of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts’s historic, twentieth-century, and contemporary collections in its Historic Landmark Building, $75,000

Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, to support a thematic collection reinstallation of the First Peoples Gallery of the Royal Ontario Museum in collaboration with Indigenous curators, cultural leaders, and scholars, $53,000

Shelburne Museum, Shelburne, Vermont, to support the development with Indigenous culture bearers of a two-part inaugural exhibition and accompanying publication of the Shelburne Museum’s Perry Center for Native American Art, $75,000

Smithsonian’s Anacostia Community Museum, Washington, D.C., to support the development at the Smithsonian’s Anacostia Community Museum with community collaborators of The Art of Liberation: Washington, D.C.’s Black Arts Movement of the 1960s–1980s (working title), $75,000

Tacoma Art Museum, Tacoma, Washington, to support long-term collection-based exhibitions at the Tacoma Art Museum under the direction of guest curators who incorporate a variety of contemporary voices and artists from Indigenous, Native American, Chinese American, Mexican, Black, and Arab communities, $50,000

The Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, Michigan, to support planning for the reinstallation of the Detroit Institute of Arts’s modern and contemporary art galleries in themes relevant to the Detroit area—including social and environmental justice, gender and sexuality, labor and industrialization, and technology and urbanism, $75,000

The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, Maryland, to support the development with community focus groups and an advisory committee of Latinx leaders of Time, Place, & Peoples in the Americas / Tiempo, Espacio, y Pueblos de las Américas (working title), $75,000

The Trustees of Reservations, Boston, Massachusetts, to support planning for the reinterpretation of the Native American collections across the more than 120 sites in Massachusetts stewarded by the Trustees of Reservations (the nation’s oldest statewide conservation and historic preservation organization), $34,000

UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA), Berkely, California, to support the UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive’s Rooted West: African American Quilts in California After 1940, a collection-based exhibition that traces the flow, keeping, and flourishing of quilts, $75,000

Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, Virginia, to support planning for the integration of Indigenous American art into the new American art galleries of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts’s building expansion and renovation project, $50,000

Chicago

Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, Illinois, presented as part of Art Design Chicago, to support Andrea Carlson: Shimmer on Horizons, the first solo exhibition in a Chicago museum presenting work by Andrea Carlson, co-founder of the Center for Native Futures, $75,000

The Renaissance Society at The University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, presented as part of Art Design Chicago, to support the publication The Hamza Walker Book of Essays, recognizing Walker’s significant contributions to the contemporary art field as a curator and ensuring his place in the art-historical record, $25,000

Convenings

Afield, Paris, France, to support a convening hosted by KANAL—Centre Pompidou in Brussels, Belgium, and the AFIELD Forum, bringing together American and international artists, $14,024

Arizona State University, School of Humanities, Arts, and Cultural Studies, Tempe, Arizona, to support What Remains Visible?: Navigating Loss & Grief Within Photographic Archives of Incarceration and Colonial Violence, a two-day workshop and symposium in tandem with the end of Filipino American History Month, $25,000

Asian/Pacific/American Institute—New York University, New York, New York, to support “GAX Taiwan 2024: Global Asia Pacific and Indigenous Art,” a week-long convening taking place in Taipei, Taiwan and Southern Taiwan at the Greater Sandimen region in Majia Village with the Indigenous Paiwan Community at the Kacalisian Art Village, $25,000

BRIC Arts Media, Brooklyn, New York, to support “Disability Artistry as a Current in American Art: Conversation, Convening, and Access Praxis” at BRIC, a one-day convening devoted to the experiences, perspectives, and work of disabled artists, $25,000

Colby College, Waterville, Maine, to support “Wabanaki Artist Convening: Inspiring Transformative Institutional Change through Strong Relationships and Native-led Partnerships,” taking place beyond the Colby College campus in the Wabanaki communities in the surrounding areas, $25,000

Gateway Regional Arts Center, Mt. Sterling, Kentucky, to support “Affrilachian Art Summit,” the first gathering solely dedicated to exploring the contributions of Black visual artists in Appalachia, addressing barriers and fostering discussions on solutions for emerging Affrilachian artists, $20,000

Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, California, to support “Your Discipline Undid Me: Reckoning and Repair,” a convening on the intersection of art and medical histories featuring a keynote lecture by Paul B. Preciado and panel discussions on resisting the medical gaze, $25,000

Minnesota Marine Art Museum, Winona, Minnesota, to support the Minnesota Marine Art Museum (MMAM) as it plans three site-specific convenings, drawing from the exhibition A Nation Takes Place, $25,000

Museum Hue, Brooklyn, New York, to support “Hueniverse: A Convening Centering Culturally Responsive Arts Practices,” a one-day conference hosted by Museum Hue at BRIC Arts Media in Brooklyn, NY, $25,000

Photography Network, New Brunswick, New Jersey, to support “In Relation: Photography’s Communities,” a three-day hybrid convening at the Center for Creative Photography (CCP) at the University of Arizona in Tucson, exploring the role of photography in addressing issues of visibility, belonging, and representation, $25,000

Rivers Institute for Contemporary Art & Thought, New Orleans, Louisiana, in support of its Marronage; Meaning Wild Confluence series, bringing together global artists, scholars, and activists for year-long gatherings exploring the cultural significance of wetlands, $15,000

Swiss Institute, New York, New York, to support “Energies: A Symposium,” a two-day interdisciplinary event to accompany the group exhibition Energies (working title) at the Swiss Institute (SI) and nearby partner organizations, $25,000

Textile Society of America, Baltimore, Maryland, to support “Shifts and Strands: Rethinking the Possibilities and Potentials of Textiles,” an online international symposium that highlights artists, scholars, scientists, and caretakers exploring textile materials, cultures, and histories, aiming to promote equity, antiracism, and accessibility in the textile field, $25,000

The Living New Deal, Oakland, California, to support “Forgotten Federal Art Legacies: PWAP to CETA,” a convening in San Francisco that brings together Living New Deal (LND) and CETA Legacy Project leaders, local art professionals, and students in San Francisco to explore the long-term impact of New Deal art initiatives, $25,000

Visual AIDS, New York, New York, to support “Reimagining Viral Futures through the Visual AIDS Archive: The Sensory Aesthetics of Ronald Lockett and Robert Farber,” a two-day intensive studio convening and public symposium centered around the work of two artists lost to the AIDS crisis: Robert Farber (1948–1995) and Ronald Lockett (1965–1998), $25,000

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