• Search
Grants

All Grants

Center for Native Futures
$150,000
Chicago, Illinois
2023

To support a series of activities, starting in summer 2023 through 2024, to inaugurate the center’s new gallery and workshop space in the Marquette Building in downtown Chicago. The activities that are part of the Terra Foundation initiative Art Design Chicago include an inaugural exhibition (September 2023–April 2024) showcasing art and poetry by the center’s six co-founders; a second exhibition (June–December 2024) featuring work by artists with ties to the Great Lakes region; public programs comprising artist talks, studio tours, and workshops; and the second biannual Mounds Summit (December 2023).  

Museum of Vernacular Arts and Knowledge
$100,000
Chicago, Illinois
2023

To fund planning activities for The New Art School Modality (NASM), a new art-school model grounded in the tenets of the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s and 1970s in Chicago and reflecting its ethos of collaboration, experimentation, and improvisation. During the planning phase, Museum of Vernacular Arts and Knowledge will offer three long-form and one or two short-form NASM programs, refine course design, develop its business model, identify institutional and funding partners, and define impact measures.   

Floating Museum
$110,000
Chicago, Illinois
2023

To support Floating Monuments: Mecca Flats, a large-scale inflatable public work of art that references a historic building called Mecca Flats (no longer extant) on Chicago’s South Side that was significant to the city’s cultural and social history. The movable structure, installed in several Chicago parks sites in 2024, is accompanied by programs that celebrates the arts and artists associated with the Mecca Flats and Chicago’s Black Renaissance while at the same time addressing the legacy of displacement and disinvestment in several of the city’s neighborhoods. The project takes place as part of the Terra Foundation initiative Art Design Chicago.

Hyde Park Art Center
$102,000
Chicago, Illinois
2023

To support The United Colors of Robert Paige (April–August 2024), a 50-year retrospective exhibition of works in multiple media by Robert Paige, an artist/designer perhaps best known for his textile designs. The grant supports an engagement fellow, who leads a curriculum-development project and programs connected to the exhibition. The project is part of the Terra Foundation initiative Art Design Chicago.

Hyde Park Art Center
$60,000
Chicago, Illinois
2023

To support the exhibition Alice Shaddle: Fuller Circles (March–July 2024), which examines the work and practice of Alice Shaddle (1928–2017), a Chicago artist and longtime Hyde Park Art Center teacher, who also co-founded the women’s artist collective and gallery Artemisia. The project is part of the Terra Foundation initiative Art Design Chicago.

Museum of Contemporary Art
$125,000
Chicago, Illinois
2023

To support Entre Horizontes: Art & Activism Between Chicago and Puerto Rico (August 2023–May 2024), an interdisciplinary exhibition that examines the affinities and relationships between the social-justice and anticolonial movements and artistic production of the Puerto Rican diaspora from 1960s to present. The grant request includes support for an engagement fellow, who facilitates programs developed for and with the Puerto Rican community. The project is part of the Terra Foundation initiative Art Design Chicago.

Smart Museum of Art
$110,000
Chicago, Illinois
2023

To support Ruth Duckworth: Life as a Unity (September 2023–January 2024), an exhibition that explores the art and influences of Ruth Duckworth and features 50 sculptures she created in Chicago, repositioning Duckworth as a pioneering modernist deeply engaged with the natural world. The grant request includes support for an engagement fellow, who leads an outreach project co-developed with teaching artists and teens involved in the museum’s Smart Teens program. The project is part of the Terra Foundation initiative Art Design Chicago.

Hyde Park Art Center
$300,000
Chicago, IL
2023

To support the Artist-Run Chicago Fund, which awards unrestricted grants to artist-run spaces and collaboratives. The fund supports 25 artist-run groups with unrestricted grants and offers 15 project awards to engage the public through exhibitions and installations, talks, community events, and workshops. It also offers professional development and networking opportunities. The initiative takes place as part of the Terra Foundation initiative Art Design Chicago. 

Arts Alliance Illinois
$50,000
Chicago, Illinois
2023

To support Arts Alliance Illinois in its work to strengthen the vitality and resiliency of the arts. The grant supports the following types of activities: Liberation Learning Groups, which provide antiracism training and accountability workshops for arts administrators; the One State Arts Conference, which annually brings together members of the creative sector from across Illinois for professional development, resource sharing, networking, and mutual support, as well as field-driven research pertaining to the arts sector in Illinois, organized in partnership with the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

Folded Map
$30,000
Chicago, Illinois
2023

To support the Folded Map Curriculum Project, an extension of photographer and social-justice artist Tonika Johnson’s Folded Map project exploring the history and legacy of segregation in Chicago. Using a compelling artistic approach, the project takes insights informed by decades of social science research and makes them accessible to a broad audience. Offered to Chicago area middle- and high-school teachers free of charge, the professionally designed curriculum includes a teacher’s guide and a student edition in the form of a full-color artist-illustrated booklet.

Museum of Vernacular Arts and Knowledge
$150,000
Chicago, Illinois
2023

To support The New Art School Modality, a new art school model that provides free or low-cost art and art history courses delivered online and in-person to a culturally, geographically, and generationally diverse community of students. The project, which provides an affordable alternative to art schools, is rooted in a revised set of values centering art histories and art forms that have been underrecognized and ways of knowing and learning about art (including collective teaching and intergenerational and collaborative methods) that draw upon a range of cultural contexts.

Gallery 400 at University of Illinois at Chicago
$53,000
Chicago, Illinois
2023

To support the Chicago presentation at Gallery 400 of the exhibition Contemporary Ex-Votos: Devotion Beyond Medium, opening in January 2024. The exhibition sheds light on the understudied iconographic and ideological aspects of ex-votos, a type of retablo (small devotional painting) depicting miracles painted on tin and found materials. Demonstrating the important place of ex-votos in the history of the Americas, the exhibition also recontextualizes studies of contemporary devotion in Latin America and the US. A scholarly catalogue accompanies the exhibition.