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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.   

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).  

Threewalls
$75,000
Chicago, IL
2022

To support research-and-development activities for Call-and-Response: Dreaming of a Future, an exhibition and publication project developed as part of Threewalls’s twentieth anniversary. The initiative explores community visions for the future and the institution’s place within the history of Black visual-art spaces and collectives in Chicago and other cities. The project is presented as part of the Terra Foundation initiative Art Design Chicago. 

National Museum of Mexican Art
$35,000
Chicago, IL
2022

To support The Legacy of Carlos Cortéz, an exhibition examining the legacy of the Chicago-based artist, with emphasis on his influence on the political art tradition in Chicago and beyond. The project is presented as part of the Terra Foundation initiative Art Design Chicago. 

Field Museum
$25,000
Chicago, IL
2022

To support “Indigenizing Museum Practices: Sharing Experiences and Strategies,” a two-day convening bringing together Indigenous and non-Indigenous curators, artists, academics, and community members to consider Indigenous practices in museum contexts and strategies for collaboration and reciprocity, artistic practice, the confrontation of colonial legacies, and more. 

Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago
$75,000
Chicago, IL
2022

To support Gary Simmons: Public Enemy, a comprehensive survey of work by multidisciplinary artist Gary Simmons, presented in partnership with Pérez Art Museum Miami.