Terra Foundation Exhibition Grants support organizations in planning and implementing temporary loan exhibitions.

Exhibition Grant Guidelines

Gallery installation with people viewing art.

Installation view of Americans in Paris: Artists Working in Postwar France, 1946–1962. Photo: David Heald. Courtesy Grey Art Museum, New York University

Closed

Exhibition Grant Deadlines

For exhibitions that open after January 1, 2027.

Inquiry Due March 6, 2026
Proposal Due May 15, 2026
Grant Range $25K–$200K

Exhibition Grants

We encourage exhibitions that broaden understandings of American art at institutions worldwide. We welcome proposals from museums, art centers, and community-based cultural organizations of varying sizes, annual budgets, and diverse geographies, within and outside the United States. This is a highly competitive program.

  • Grants typically range between $25,000 and $200,000, with an average grant size of $100,000.
  • Grant support through this program is offered once yearly.
  • Grants for proposals submitted in May 2025 will be awarded in fall 2025.

Grant Overview

Exhibitions can offer shared experiences and transformative encounters, leading to new ways of thinking and seeing art and the world. They are designed to be temporary and are often themed—inviting visitors to acknowledge and reflect on the intentions of artists and curators, bringing them into conversation with ideas beyond their own. Loan shows offer expanded access to art and ideas, offering something new to communities of visitors and to histories of art.

If you are seeking support for research and planning related to, and/or for exhibitions drawn primarily from, your organization’s permanent collection, please see our Collections grant program.

Introduction

Exhibitions can offer shared experiences and transformative encounters, leading to new ways of thinking and seeing art and the world. They are designed to be temporary and are often themed—inviting visitors to acknowledge and reflect on the intentions of artists and curators, bringing them into conversation with ideas beyond their own. Loan shows offer expanded access to art and ideas, offering something new to communities of visitors and to histories of art.

If you are seeking support for research and planning related to, and/or for exhibitions drawn primarily from, your organization’s permanent collection, please see our Collections grant program.

What We Fund

Grants will offset planning and/or implementation costs for temporary exhibitions primarily comprising artworks that are not part of the institution’s permanent collection. Funds may be used for costs associated with:

  • planning and research, including short-term positions (e.g. research fellows or assistants), convenings, travel, and advisory committees
  • interpretation
  • artist fees (except for commissions)
  • shipping, crating, couriers, insurance, and object loan fees
  • construction of temporary gallery walls
  • conservation/framing
  • programs
  • marketing
  • dissemination of research, whether in digital or print form

We encourage written materials to be multilingual when possible and relevant to the project and/or its audiences.

We are also happy to support related staff positions (up to 25% of the award amount) and indirect costs (up to 15% of the award amount).

Foundation Priorities

The Terra Foundation supports projects that engage the visual arts of the United States and Indigenous art of North America, while questioning and broadening understandings of American art and transforming how its stories are told.

We encourage projects that:

  • collectively reflect the full breadth and complexity of American art and its histories through the artists represented, voices included, and stories told
  • engage artists, scholars, and communities who present a plurality of perspectives and methods, including intercultural and interdisciplinary approaches
  • catalyze inclusive and expansive practices in the field of American art

Eligibility

All applicants must hold United States 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status or its international equivalent.

Only the project organizer(s) may apply for support. If co-organizing with a partner museum, the co-organizers are encouraged to apply jointly. If co-organizers do not apply jointly, we accept only one grant inquiry per project, from whichever organization applies first (even if that letter of inquiry does not get invited to the proposal stage). Grants are not made to individuals.

We do not accept applications for Exhibition Grants from the same institution two consecutive years if a grant has been awarded. For example, if you were awarded an Exhibition Grant in 2023, you can apply for another Exhibition grant to be awarded in 2025. However, if you received a grant for planning only, you may apply for an implementation grant for the same project the following year.

Currently, we do not accept requests for:

  • the creation or acquisition of existing or commissioned artwork
  • acquisitions or capital expenditures or permanent equipment (including technology, construction other than temporary gallery walls, contracted exhibition or architectural design, exhibition furniture/vitrines, etc.)
  • projects that are exclusively online
  • projects previously opened that are touring to new venues
  • grant inquiries or proposals previously declined through this program

How to Apply

Grant Inquiry Form
Use the Apply Now buttons to submit a grant inquiry form by the deadline listed on this page. After reviewing the inquiry, the foundation may invite you to submit a grant proposal.

Grant Proposal
If invited, prospective applicants submit a grant proposal. Formal proposals and all attachments must be written in English. Grant proposals are reviewed by an external panel made up of curators and arts professionals who reflect a diverse range of backgrounds, perspectives, and approaches.

Contact Us

If you have questions about Exhibition Grants, please email Carrie Haslett, Senior Program Director, Exhibition Grants & Initiatives, at [email protected].

Inquiry and Proposal Forms

The application process asks applicants to clearly and concisely describe their project’s intended impact and outcomes, as well as how grant funds will supplement existing resources to achieve institutional goals.

Blank forms will be provided for reference in early 2026.

Grant Resources

Grant Resources

For more information on timelines, how to apply, eligibility, and other common questions, please review our Applicant Resources.

Current grantees, please visit Grantee Resources for information about managing a grant, as well as crediting guidelines.

Previous Award Cycle

  • $112,500 median grant
  • 38 grants
  • $4.4M awarded

Quotation

The WAMPUM/OTGÖA exhibition is the culmination of three hundred years of relationship building. This unique and unprecedented collaboration will knit a friendship between peoples and time. Perhaps more importantly, it will pave the way for future collaborations between European and North American Indigenous museums that are mutually beneficial as well as have a great impact on the public.

The project was developed through a collaborative and consultative process that . . . fostered broad-based investment in the project and seeded and strengthened relationships that will continue to grow. A multi-faceted structure of care supported a range of responses elicited from visitors to the exhibition and has been cited as a model by colleagues in the field.

Janet Deesformerly Steven and Lisa Munster Tananbaum Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, Block Museum of Art

Supported Exhibition Projects

Recent Exhibition Grants

View the database to learn more about previous Exhibition projects.

Additional Grant Opportunities

Two people looking at a painting on a well, with a sculpture to their left.

The Stories We Carry, collection reinstallation, Seattle Museum of Art, copyright: Chloe Collyer

Person seated in a crowd asking a question into a microphone.

“How can we gather now?,” March 31–April 2, 2023, produced by Washington Project for the Arts, co-directed by Asad Raza & Prem Krishnamurthy, symposium attendee Anisa Olufemi asks a question during Stefanie Hessler’s keynote lecture, photo by McKenzie Grant-Gordon courtesy of Washington Project for the Arts.

Stories and News

Grants Awarded

Collections Grants

Grants Awarded Spring 2025

Read

Three people in a gallery looking at three works of art hanging on a wall.

“Pictures of Belonging” documents the work of three female artists whose careers were deeply affected by prison camps in the United States during World War II.Credit...via Smithsonian American Art Museum; Photo by Albert Ting

Abstract painting in various shapes and pastel colors, including the words "estoy bien."

Candida Alvarez, Estoy Bien, 2017. Photography by Martin Seck. Image courtesy of the artist and El Museo del Barrio.

In the News

Exhibition Grants

An Artist Expands the Landscape of Sound

Read