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Grants & Fellowship Opportunities

2020

University of Illinois at Chicago
$22,500
Chicago, Illinois
2020

To support Chicago Design: Histories and Narratives, a scholarly publication developed as an outgrowth of the two-day international conference of the same name, presented as part of Art Design Chicago 2018. Foregrounding a broad definition of design in Chicago, the volume is the first to look beyond previously studied examples of modernism, shedding light on lesser known—yet significant—design practices nurtured in Chicago from the late-nineteenth through twentieth century, by virtue of the city’s role as a national hub for printing, advertising, marketing, retail manufacturing, transportation, and design education.

Polish Museum of America
$2,300
Chicago, Illinois
2020

To support research travel to Poland for an exhibition tentatively titled Face to Face with Modernism: Stanislaw Szukalski in Chicago, 1913–23, focusing on the formation of modernist movements and networks in Chicago through the lens of Szukalski’s work, including sculptures, prints, and photographs created during his formative years in the city.

Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs & Special Events
$22,500
Chicago, Illinois
2020

To support At Home in the World: African American Designers in Chicago, a scholarly publication based on the exhibition African American Designers in Chicago: Art, Commerce, and Politics of Race presented as part of Art Design Chicago 2018. The publication serves as the first comprehensive survey of Black design in Chicago, a major center of American product manufacturing and consumer culture in the twentieth century, while exploring the diverse work and worldviews of the city’s African American designers from the start of the Great Migration to today.

Art Design Chicago 2024
$1,158,000
Chicago, Illinois
2020

To fund the administration, planning, and partner-engagement and audience-building activities for the second iteration of Art Design Chicago, a large-scale collaborative project exploring the city’s art and design history, leading up to the major citywide presentation planned for 2024.

Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza
$194,098
Madrid, Spain
2020

To support the Terra Foundation Collection Research Fellowship in American Art, a two-year fellowship focused on the museum’s permanent collection of nineteenth-century art of the United States. The fellow works with curators to imagine and implement a new installation of the American collection at the museum, the first full re-installation since the 1990s. The fellow publishes scholarly essays, contributes to a new collection catalogue, and organizes an international symposium in Madrid.

Musée du Quai Branly – Jacques Chirac
$221,500
Paris, France
2020

To support the Terra Foundation Research Fellowship and Convenings on Native American Art, a twelve-month research fellowship and two convenings devoted to the museum’s permanent collection of Native American art, from the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries, known as the “Royal Collections.” This interdisciplinary, multi-year research project of this vast collection furthers knowledge of the fragile indigenous objects and contributes to two convenings in Paris with representatives from Native American communities for first-hand study and discussion in front of objects.

Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
$358,000
Berlin, Germany
2020

To support the four-year renewal of the Terra Foundation Postdoctoral Teaching Fellowship at the Institute of Art and Visual History, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. This program, originally funded in 2016 for a four-year cycle, supports two postdoctoral fellows, each for a two-year period, to teach and conduct research in art and visual culture of the United States prior to 1980 at the prestigious art history department in Germany, where students and faculty represent a variety of periods and traditions of art history.

National Museum of Mexican Art
$22,000
Chicago, Illinois
2020

To support “Nuestras Historias: Teaching the Story of America through Art” in the 2020–21 school year, which includes professional development for teachers, curriculum development, field trips for students, and artist residencies in classrooms. First supported by the Terra Foundation in 2014, the program makes use of the museum’s collection exhibition and highlights works by Mexican American artists featured in it. This program is aligned to the Common Core State Standards in English Language Arts and serves 20 Chicago Public Schools teachers in a variety of disciplines from up to 15 schools, and 400 students in grades K–12.

Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago
$25,000
Chicago, Illinois
2020

To support the development and implementation of a pilot teacher professional-development and collaborative curriculum-development program to take place in conjunction with the exhibition Alien vs. Citizen. The program brings together for the first time a cohort of classroom teachers, practicing artists who serve as museum guides, and MCA staff to co-design and evaluate new in-gallery and in-classroom tools and curricula engaging the key themes of the exhibition.

Intuit: The Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art
$70,000
Chicago, Illinois
2020

To support the “Teacher Fellowship Program” in the 2019–20 and 2020–21 school years. The program provides professional development for Chicago Public School teachers centered on teaching with American outsider or non-mainstream art. During more than 50 program hours, teachers explore outsider art concepts, collections, and artists, and are guided in creating interdisciplinary lesson plans designed to help students make personal connections and responses to these individuals and their work. Culminating in an exhibition of student art, the program is expected to serve annually approximately 26 Chicago Public Schools teachers at 10–14 schools and 640 students.

Frank Lloyd Wright Trust
$49,650
Chicago, Illinois
2020

To support “Teaching by Design,” a multi-year program and website that introduces K–12 teachers to Wright’s designs and philosophy and their relationships to contemporary issues in science, technology, engineering, the arts, and math (STEAM), along with strategies for integrating art and design into daily classroom instruction. The grant supports 12 professional-development seminars, 100 new online lesson plans, evaluation, and promotion of online teacher resources.  Piloted in 2016 with the Terra Foundation’s support, the next iteration serves 90 or more K–12 teachers and 9,000 students from 40 schools, along with 3,000 new website users.

The Art Institute of Chicago
$110,000
Chicago, Illinois
2020

To support the creation of a new American art-focused Art + History field-trip program, a series of professional-development convenings for teachers, and the multiday Terra Foundation American Sources Teacher Program. The two-year project, expected to serve 140 teachers and 1,150 students, is intended to build participants’ skills in source analysis, historical inquiry, and visual literacy, centered on essential questions and issues related to the topic “America in the World.” During the convenings, teachers are introduced to works from the museum’s collections and related source materials and ways to use these resources to explore such topics as immigration, international conflict and/or partnerships, cultural exchange, and other global issues.