Grants Awarded Fall 2025

The exhibition projects receiving grants include Japan/America at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, which will explore a generation of Japanese American artists, photographers, and architects whose lives were disrupted by Executive Order 9066, leading to the displacement of 120,000 Japanese Americans from the West Coast during World War II. Featuring renowned as well as lesser-known historical and contemporary artists, the exhibition will include about 200 works in every form of media, including painting, sculpture, photography, ceramics, and design.

Edmonia Lewis: Said in Stone at the Georgia Museum of Art will mark the first monographic exhibition dedicated to Edmonia Lewis (1844–1907), an artist of both African American and Indigenous descent who achieved international acclaim. Featuring approximately twenty sculptures, the exhibition represents most of Lewis’s known work and situates her achievements within the wider contexts of race and gender dynamics, Indigenous knowledge systems, the politics of representation, and the transatlantic art market.

Shawnya L. Harris, Larry D. and Brenda A. Thompson Curator of African American and African Diasporic Art noted, “Edmonia Lewis: Said in Stone seeks to restore and amplify the complex narrative of Lewis’s life and work—stories that challenge and enrich our understanding of American art. Through our collaborative research approach, technical study, and partnerships with Black and Indigenous voices and institutions, we embrace a multivocal approach to interpretation. For the Georgia Museum of Art and [co-organizer] Peabody Essex Museum, this project is an opportunity to spark dialogue on identity, resilience, and belonging, connecting past and present in meaningful ways.”

Tempting to Touch: Surface and Substance in Twentieth-Century American Art at the Baltimore Museum of Art will highlight the ways artists have implemented the sense of touch in their work. It will also explore how artists reshape the traditional art experience. Featuring more than eighty works, the exhibition will focus on artists’ engagement with tactile processes, textured materials, moveable elements, and depictions of touch.

Lutz Bacher: Burning the Days at WIELS will be the first posthumous survey of Lutz Bacher (1943–2019), an American artist who challenged power dynamics through an unsettling mix of humor, pop culture references, and unflinching examinations of sexuality, violence, and political paranoia. The exhibition will feature early image-based works that question photographic truth and mass media, as well as later landscape installations exploring cosmic and psychological unknowns.

As part of the Terra Collection-in-Residence program, the foundation will lend Marsden Hartley’s Painting No. 50, 1914–15 to the National Gallery, London. for a period of four years (June 2026–June 2030). Support will include crating and round-trip shipping as well as funds for the care and interpretation of the artwork during the loan period. Programs will explore expanded stories of American art. Christopher Riopelle, the Neil Westreich Curator of Post-1800 Paintings, selected the painting as a dramatic outlier when compared to the National Gallery’s permanent collection, an encyclopedic range of European paintings ranging from the thirteenth to the nineteenth centuries.

“The display of Painting No. 50 in the National Gallery will represent one of the first occasions that Hartley’s work is seen in Europe in the broader context of the emergence of avant-garde art,” noted Riopelle. “This loan will provide our visitors and visiting scholars with an exceptional opportunity to study a key Abstractionist work, a movement which is historically under-appreciated and little understood in the UK.”

Guided by the Terra Foundation’s Indigenous Advisory Council and launching in 2026, Native Arts Mobility Grants at First Nation Development Institute will support travel and related expenses to advance self-directed research, learning, and capacity-building. Participants in this strategic initiative will include artists, scholars, researchers, and curators working in the field of Native arts. The program seeks to elevate Native voices and deepen the public’s understanding of their roles within the arts. Travel mobility grant recipients will offer a knowledge-sharing event to disseminate what they have learned to their communities and the broader Native arts field.

Juan Lucero, Program Manager Indigenous Initiatives and Partnerships at the Terra Foundation said, “The Native Arts Mobility grants were developed with the belief that highlighting diverse histories and strengthening current connections helps create more equitable futures for Indigenous arts in the American art field. Guided by cultural humility, equity, collaboration, and bold experimentation, this program eliminates barriers that have long restricted Native and Indigenous researchers, artists, and cultural workers. By supporting travel, research, and community engagement, we honor Indigenous knowledge systems while encouraging a vibrant, interconnected network of practitioners. This fund is not just an investment in projects; it is an investment in people, relationships, and the transformative power of Indigenous-led work to reshape the field of American art.”

Another strategic initiative, the National Museum of Puerto Rican Arts and Culture’s Archives and Collections project will enhance NMPRAC’s collections and archives management, supporting their preservation and making them more publicly accessible. The grant will also facilitate planning for an offsite Archives and Collections Center. NMPRAC’s archival collections reflect Puerto Rican contributions across the visual arts, literature, politics, and community organizing. The collections include a diverse array of art forms and related ephemera spanning generations and representing a broad geographic reach, from artists born and working on the island to those creating in Puerto Rican diaspora communities across the US and abroad.

Billy Ocasio, NMPRAC President and CEO reflected, “Thanks to the Terra Foundation’s grant, NMPRAC will preserve, activate, and share our Puerto Rican archives and collections in ways that expand narratives traditionally excluded from American art. By making these materials more inclusive, accessible, and community-centered, NMPRAC will strengthen its role as a resource for scholarship, artistic learning, and community engagement. We will begin this work by digitizing our collections and archives to make them accessible online, hosting Community Archiving 101 workshops, and advancing our oral history project.”

Occupying five city blocks and thirty-nine structures in Houston’s Historic Third Ward, Project Row Houses (PRH) has been a community platform since 1993. By developing an archive, conserving objects in its collection, and publishing catalogues raisonnés of the founding artists’ work, PRH is laying the foundation for its future. This strategic initiative supports processing and digitizing photographs, correspondence, ephemera, and artwork pertaining to the history of the organization. The archive is the first step toward building the PRH Institute, a physical space and program intended to accommodate the archive, administration offices, a gallery space, studio space for practicing artists, and spaces for education and learning.

Danielle Burns Wilson, Executive Director at Project Row Houses noted, “Digitizing and processing over 30 years’ worth of archival material with the support of the Terra Foundation means we are on track to tell the full story of Project Row Houses, and to share the source materials that tell that story with the larger community of artists, scholars, and social sculptors who can learn from it, build on it, and create their own stories. We are excited to share what we unearth so it can move out of boxes in a storage room to open and accessible digital platforms.”

The CROYAN Project (Collections Royales d’Amérique du Nord) at the Musée du Quai Branly–-Jacques Chirac takes a multidisciplinary and collaborative approach toward research, and the awarded project will support convenings that challenge colonial perspectives by exploring French royal collections from North America. Focusing on significant early objects from present-day Canada and the United States, CROYAN seeks to support Indigenous-led research and dialogue. Invited Native American guests are integral to the convenings’ spirit of exchange and co-creation.

Paz Nunez, Head Curator of the Americas, Musée du quai Branly-Jacques Chirac, said, “The CROYAN project strengthens collaborative stewardship by building respectful relationships with Native American communities through inclusive, co-creative processes and active listening. We seek to understand contemporary perspectives on the collections and support culturally informed decisions. The symposium ‘Sharing Collections, Co-writing History’ advanced this dialogue through case studies highlighting respectful, layered interpretations of Indigenous art and the meaningful integration of Native voices in academic and museum contexts.”

The “Convening of American Curators in Asian and Asian Diasporic Art” at the Asian Art Museum (AAM) brings together curators, artists, scholars, and cultural practitioners to engage with evolving narratives of Asian and Asian diasporic art in the United States. Held in conjunction with Raving into the Future, AAM’s first exhibition focused on Southwest Asia and North Africa and Afro-Asian diasporas, the convening will encompass sessions on Southwest Asian American artists, researchers, and curators, exploring their deep cultural connections to North Africa.

Lastly, in light of federal funding cuts in the cultural sector, and in keeping with the values of equity, responsiveness, and partnership, we initiated a rapid response program to identify a group of current and longstanding grantee partners to receive timely and targeted support; we also committed to investing in strategic collective funding efforts with peer foundations.

National Museum of Puerto Rican Arts and Culture, Chicago, IL, NMPRAC Archives and Collections, $200,000

First Nations Development Institute, Longmont, CO, Native Arts Mobility Grants, $130,000

The National Gallery, London, UK, Terra Collection-in-Residence at The National Gallery, London, $146,000

Smart Museum of Art, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, Terra Collection-in-Residence at the Smart Museum of Art, $109,200

Project Row Houses, Houston, TX, PRH Archives—Digitizing & Processing to Lay the Groundwork for the PRH Institute, $125,000

Obama Foundation, Chicago, IL, Fostering Dialogue through Art at the Obama Presidential Center, $100,000

Burke Museum Association, Seattle, WA, Connections to Culture: Burke Museum Resources for Native Artists and Researchers, $75,000

Raices, Chicago, IL, Mapping and Connecting Chicago’s Latine Visual Arts Archives, $75,000

Sixty Inches From Center, Chicago, IL, Chicago Archives + Artists Project, $75,000

Inner City Muslim Action Network, Chicago, IL, Chicago Freedom Movement: A Fierce Urgency of Now, $50,000

Anchorage Museum, Anchorage, AK, Pewa and the Plover: Pacific Adaptation and Resilience, $200,000

The Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, MD, Tempting to Touch: Surface and Substance in 20th-Century American Art (working title), $200,000

The Harwood Museum of Art, Albuquerque, NM, Unearthing Futures/Desenterrando Futuros, $200,000

Colby College, Waterville, ME, Imagining an Archipelago: Art from Cuba, Guam, the Philippines, Puerto Rico, and Their Diasporas, $150,000

High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA, Isamu Noguchi: “I am not a designer,” $150,000

Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, Japan/America, $150,000

The Newark Museum, Newark, NJ, In Dreamtime: Aljira, A Center for Contemporary Art, 1983-2018, $150,000

Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, OH, Javier Téllez: Histories of Folly (working title), $150,000

WIELS, Forest, Belgium, Lutz Bacher: Burning the Days, $150,000

Georgia Museum of Art, Athens, GA, Edmonia Lewis: Said in Stone, $125,000

Jacobson House Native Art Center, Norman, OK, Calling Back the Spirits: A Healing Journey, $125,000

Museum Ludwig, Cologne, Cologne, Germany, Along the Color Line—Transatlantic Modernism, $125,000

Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA, Workshop of the World: Arts & Crafts in Philadelphia, $125,000

Princeton University Art Museum, Princeton, NJ, Clay Has Memory: Creative Lineages from Africa, $125,000

Weisman Art Museum of the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, Rematriation in Indigenous Arts, $125,000

National Public Housing Museum, Chicago, IL, Nathaniel Mary Quinn’s Portraits, $100,000

New Bedford Whaling Museum, New Bedford, MA, North/South: Slavery and Abolition on the Eastern, $100,000

Northwest Museum of Arts and Culture, Spokane, WA, Research and Relationship Building Convening for Contemporary Plateau Exhibition (working title), $100,000

Swiss Institute, New York, NY, The Environment, $100,000

The Camargo Foundation, Cassis, France, Récupérations, $100,000

University of Maryland—David C. Driskell Center, College Park, MD, Black Flags & Other Allegiances, $100,000

Rencontres d’Arles, Arles, France, THE AFRO: A LABOUR OF LOVE, $89,000

ArtCenter College of Design, Pasadena, CA, Dorr Bothwell: In Her Mind’s Eye, $77,000

Bakersfield Museum of Art, Bakersfield, CA, Chicano Visions: The Legacy of Los Four, $75,000

Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY, Betty Parsons: An Artist with a Gallery, $75,000

Buffalo AKG Art Museum (formerly Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY, Let Us Gather in a Flourishing Way, $75,000

Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, AR, Made in Beauty: 1000 Years of Indigenous Art [working subtitle], $75,000

IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts (MoCNA), Santa Fe, NM, Paper Trails: Unfolding Indigenous Narratives, $75,000

Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute, Utica, NY, Robert Duncanson and the Transatlantic Landscape, 1840–1875 (working title), $75,000

North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh, NC, Art of Integration: Jacob Lawrence’s Hospital Series, $75,000

The Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston, Boston, MA, Art, Activism, and Community at AAMARP, 1977 to Today (working title), $75,000

Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian, Santa Fe, NM, Outburst: Native American Art After Vietnam, $75,000

Serralves Museum, Porto, Portugal, Alice Neel: Beautifully Imperfect, $60,000

James A. Michener Art Museum, Doylestown, PA, Selma Burke: Keeping Sculpture Alive, $50,000

Georg Kolbe Museum, Berlin, Germany, American Figurative Sculpture, $44,000

The Hepworth Wakefield, Wakefield, United Kingdom, First Solo Exhibition of Betye Saar in the United Kingdom, $28,000

Musée du Quai Branly—Jacques Chirac, Paris, France, The CROYAN Project: New Collaborative Approaches in Native North American Contexts, $39,700

Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, Convening of American Curators in Asian and Asian Diasporic Art, $25,000

Association for the Study of the Arts of the Present (ASAP), Los Angeles, CA, The Sixteenth Annual Conference of the Association for the Study of the Arts of the Present (ASAP/16), $25,000

Center for Photography at Woodstock (CPW), Kingston, NY, Community Archives and Cultural Activism, $25,000

David Winton Bell Gallery, Providence, RI, Activating Indigenous Objects and Stewarding Native Collections with Care: A Symposium alongside Eric-Paul Riege’s ojo|-|ólǫ, $25,000

GYOPO, Los Angeles, CA, Ring of Fire: Art of the Pacific Rim, $25,000

Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, MO, The Atrium Project: 10 Years, 10 Stories, $25,000

McCord Stewart Museum, Montreal, PQ, Canada, The Great Peace of Montreal’s 325th Anniversary Commemoration Symposium—Bringing the Indigenous points of view on the Peace Agreement concluded between the Five Nations Haudenosaunee and the French on August 4, 1701, $25,000

Mississippi Museum of Art, Jackson, MS, “The Last Downtown Art Collective”: Five Decades of Kenkeleba House, $25,000

Sixty Inches From Center, Chicago, IL, CONDUIT2: Publishing as Practice, Preservation as Power— A regional gathering focused on Black cultural stewardship through community-led publishing, intergenerational learning, and in-situ preservation across the Midwest, $25,000

Trustees of Columbia University in the City of New York on behalf of Columbia Global Paris Center, New York, NY, Meta Vaux Warrick Fuller in Paris: Art, Identity, and Belonging, $25,000

Winterthur Museum, Garden and Library, Winterthur, DE, Looking Back to the Future: Realizing “The Afric-American Picture Gallery” (Symposium), $25,000

Your Neighborhood Museum, Los Angeles, CA, Artists in Repatriation: Histories and Futures of Native Artists in Repatriation, $25,000

Performance Art Museum, Los Angeles, CA, Performance, Protest, and Preservation, $22,300

Social Good Fund—The Black Embodiments Studio, Richmond, CA, The (Printed) Matter of Black Arts Writing: Archives for the Future, $15,000

Arts Alliance Illinois, $50,000

The Arts Work Fund, $250,000

Association of Art Museum Directors, $50,000

Baltimore Museum of Art, $200,000

El Museo del Barrio, $100,000

Forge Project, $50,000

Hyde Park Art Center, $25,000

Institute of American Indian Arts, $100,000

National Museum of Mexican Art, $50,000

National Public Housing Museum, $50,000

Puerto Rican Arts Alliance, $25,000

South Side Community Art Center, $20,000

The David C. Driskell Center, $150,000

Alaska Native Heritage Center, $50,000

Arizona State University Art Museum, $50,000

Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture, $100,000

Hampton University Museum, $200,000

International Print Center New York, $30,000

Los Angeles County Museum of Art, $50,000

Voices in Contemporary Art, $25,000

Woodmere Art Museum, $25,000