Strategic Initiatives

The Center for Native Futures (CfNF) is the only nonprofit organization led exclusively by Native artists in the city of Zhegagoynak (Chicago). Through exhibitions, residencies, and community events, CfNF promotes the advancement of Native art, fosters the work and careers of contemporary Native artists, and encourages Indigenous Futurists. The Terra Foundation provided seed funding for the center as well as program support, including for the center’s inaugural Native Futures exhibition and the biannual “Mound Summit,” a daylong symposium. Over the years, the Foundation has supported initiatives such as the curator-in-residence mentorship program, the Great Lakes–centered artist exhibition Gagizhibaajiwan, sponsored booths at EXPO Chicago—an international arts exhibition at Navy Pier—and the development of the CfNF catalog, which will reflect on the organization’s first five years.

“The Terra Foundation has been integral to our development and sustainability,” said Monica Rickert-Bolter, cofounder and Director of Operations at CfNF “Our relationship with the Terra Foundation is all about trust. They had faith in our vision, and we followed through. The contemporary Native art community continues to grow and strengthen.”

“The fact of our presence becoming embedded within the fabric of the Chicago cultural scene is crucial,” said Chris Pappan, cofounder and CfNF Board President. “We are so grateful to have the opportunity to build upon the important work we have started.”

Floating Museum creates site-responsive art, design, and programming to explore and strengthen the relationships linking art, community, architecture, and public institutions. During this period, it received two grants: for Floating Monuments: for Mecca (part of Art Design Chicago) and for the Burroughs Residency pilot.

Floating Monuments: for Mecca is a thirty-foot-tall, hand-sewn inflatable monument commemorating the historic Mecca Flats building in Chicago. The original apartment complex, demolished in 1952, had been a cultural center for Chicago’s Black community in Bronzeville. The monument combines photographs, writings, and sound recordings, drawing Bronzeville’s rich history into the present and inviting reflection on the Mecca Apartments’ demolition and replacement by Crown Hall, on the Illinois Institute of Technology campus, a story that is emblematic of broader patterns of displacement in Chicago and across the US.

Honoring poet, printmaker, activist, and advocate Dr. Margaret T. Burroughs, the Burroughs Residency fosters innovative connections among art, community, architecture, and public institutions. The site of the residency, in the heart of Bronzeville, is Dr. Burroughs’s former home, where she founded the DuSable Museum of African American History in 1961.

“The Burroughs Residency and for Mecca move in different forms but toward a shared purpose: to imagine art as a living system of connection,” remarked Faheem Majeed, Floating Museum’s cofounder and co-director. “Each project extends Floating Museum’s inquiry into how memory, movement, and collaboration can create new ways of belonging, ways that honor the past while rehearsing what a more connected cultural future might look like.”

The Terra Foundation has supported the reinterpretation of Norman Rockwell Museum’s iconic painting The Problem We All Live With (1963). The updated and expanded narrative centers the personal stories of the four six-year-old Black girls who were the first students to desegregate New Orleans schools in 1960: Gail Etienne, Leona Tate, Tessie Prevost, and Ruby Bridges (the latter often misidentified as both the subject of and model for the work). New research and interviews not only describe the experiences of the first day of school but also chronicle the traumatic years that followed as the girls were moved from one white school to the next, confronting hostility and even violence from students, faculty, and administration alike. In addition to acknowledging the sacrifices and contributions of these Civil Rights trailblazers, research also fills out the stories of the brave families, communities, and committed activists that supported them. The project also recognizes the role of Lynda Gunn, a young Black girl from Stockbridge, Massachusetts, who was the model for the painting.

“In addition to reshaping the storytelling and compiling a detailed timeline of the history of the events that inspired Rockwell’s painting, our project team engaged with Black community members in New Orleans to hear their reflections on the civil rights period and gather their insights on how the painting represented that history and what the painting means to them today. These conversations, along with newly conducted research and interviews, will inform the museum’s interpretive strategy, specifically how we tell the story of the painting in a way that is fact-based, racially sensitive, and culturally aware,” said Laurie Norton Moffatt, Director and CEO, Norman Rockwell Museum. “As the events inspiring Norman Rockwell’s work recede from living memory, it is important to refresh the understanding of his iconic works in a contemporary context,” she noted.