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Grants & Fellowship Opportunities

$50,000 - $100,000

Opendox
$50,000
Kingston, New York
2023

To support Designing For Dignity: A Convening of Possibilities 02, Deem Journal’s second symposium, to be held in-person at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago and virtually. The event brings together designers, practitioners, and community members for dialogues around emergent and liberatory directions within design. Through a wide range of presentations, workshops, site/studio visits, and art installations, the event explores how design can draw on diverse perspectives to create more equitable and inclusive communities and futures. The program takes place as part of the Terra Foundation initiative Art Design Chicago.

American Indian Center of Chicago
$50,000
Chicago, Illinois
2023

To support Indigenizing Urban Intertribal Arts, a series of artmaking workshops led by Native practitioners that includes contemporary expressions of traditional Indigenous techniques in feather fans, moccasins, quillwork, and Hand Drums. The program takes place as part of the Terra Foundation initiative Art Design Chicago.

Folded Map
$50,000
Chicago, Illinois
2023

To support unBlocked, an initiative led by social justice artist Tonika Johnson that is a response to racist Land Sale Contracts in the 1950s and ’60s and their lasting impact on today’s residents. The project, in partnership with the Chicago Bungalow Association, brings together community members, artists, and other collaborators to catalyze the transformation of an Englewood block through arts-based and physical improvements and repairs to individual homes whose present-day property (de)valuation can be traced to racist housing policies. The program takes place as part of the Terra Foundation initiative Art Design Chicago.

Public Media Institute (PMI)
$50,000
Chicago, Illinois
2023

To support Artist-Run Legacies: Conversations between Generations of Artist-Run Culture in Chicago, a project that convenes and amplifies the voices of artists and organizers who have built independent artist-run platforms in Chicago over the past 45 years through the development of a story archive, in-person conversations broadcast on Lumpen Radio and Lumpen TV, and a culminating publication. PMI is pursuing this project in its capacity as caretaker of MdW, an affiliation of artist run organizations in the Midwest, and its partnership with the Hyde Park Art Center’s Artist Run Chicago Fund. The program takes place as part of the Terra Foundation initiative Art Design Chicago.

Inner-City Muslim Action Network (IMAN)
$59,000
Chicago, Illinois
2023

To support Inverse Surveillance (October 2024–1st quarter 2025), an installation created by Chicago-based artist Assia Boundaoui with the Arab and Muslim American communities in Chicago that takes the shape of a full-scale labyrinth, containing more than 33,000 pages of Freedom of Information Act documents collected during a decade-long FBI surveillance of the community. The project is part of the Terra Foundation initiative Art Design Chicago.

6018North
$75,000
Chicago, Illinois
2023

To support Myth of the Organic City (September 2024–June 2025), a broad-ranging exhibition that provides an overview of Chicago’s early designs, historical development, and contemporary usage of its water, land, and air, beginning with its Indigenous roots and extending to present-day climate concerns. Drawing from Chicago’s seal “Urbs in Horto” or “City in a Garden,” the exhibition pairs Chicago’s historical design choices with contemporary artist projects and community-led approaches to offer ways of reimagining our complicated relationship with the city and with nature. The grant supports an engagement fellow, who liaises with community partners and develops community-responsive public-engagement activities. The project is part of the Terra Foundation initiative Art Design Chicago.

Balzekas Museum of Lithuanian Culture
$50,000
Chicago, Illinois
2023

To support beLONGING: Lithuanian Artists in Chicago 1900 to Now (September 2024–December 2025), an exhibition exploring identity and place through the diverse work, perspectives, and legacy of three waves of Lithuanian immigrant artists in Chicago. This exhibition and its associated programs and publications consider the causes and consequences of immigration/migration, including displacement, colonization, trauma, and assimilation. The cost of belonging is choosing what to leave behind; its reward, creating new connections in this culturally diverse and evolving city. The grant supports an engagement fellow, who identifies partners for community-engagement initiatives and develops audience-engagement and educational programs. The project is part of the Terra Foundation initiative Art Design Chicago.

Mitchell Museum of the American Indian
$54,000
Evanston, Illinois
2023

To support Anishinaabe Art: Stories of Today (September 2024–September 2025), an exhibition that examines contemporary approaches to traditional Woodlands style art, highlighting the underrepresented and diverse Native cultures of the Great Lakes region and the materials, art forms, and processes they have carried forward over generations. The project is part of the Terra Foundation initiative Art Design Chicago.

Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events
$80,000
Chicago, Illinois
2023

To support Victoria Martinez: Braiding Histories (March–July 2024), a one-person exhibition that features the art of Chicago-based creative Victoria Martinez, who works in a variety of materials and scales, drawing inspiration from the body, the urban environment, architecture, graffiti, and the work of Chicago-based fiber artist Claire Zeisler. The grant supports an engagement fellow, who collaborates with the artist and curatorial team to create equitable and diverse forms of public engagement. The project is part of the Terra Foundation initiative Art Design Chicago.

Elmhurst Art Museum
$50,000
Elmhurst, Illinois
2023

To support A Love Supreme (January–April 2024), an exhibition in which designer Norman Teague responds to jazz musician John Coltrane as muse, providing parallels to Teague’s own life and artistic career. An adjoining installation curated by Teague in the museum’s Mies van der Rohe’s McCormick House features the work of other designers of color. The project is part of the Terra Foundation initiative Art Design Chicago.

University of Illinois – Krannert Art Museum
$100,000
Champaign, Illinois
2023

To support the retrospective exhibition Millie Wilson: The Museum of Lesbian Dreams at the University of Illinois’s Krannert Art Museum (KAM). The exhibition’s thematic sections emphasize Wilson’s consistent appropriation of museum display practices and institutional authority, her art-historical references to Dada and Surrealism, her sharp attention to gendered portrayals of sexual deviance in early twentieth-century psychoanalysis and sexology, and her longstanding interest in bodies as unruly and contested sites, all foregrounding her playful use of language and materials. A scholarly catalogue accompanies the exhibition.

Turner Contemporary
$70,000
Margate, Kent, United Kingdom
2023

To support Ed Clark (working title) at Turner Contemporary, the first solo institutional exhibition outside of the United States devoted to the artist. The exhibition highlights the ways Clark’s convention-defying techniques pushed the boundaries of painterly abstraction and explores how artistic networks influenced his canvases as well as his opportunities. A scholarly catalogue accompanies the exhibition.