Grants & Fellowship Opportunities

2023

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).  

Museu de Arte Contemporânea da Universidade de São Paulo / Terra Foundation for American Art
$50,000
São Paulo, Brazil
2023

To support a two-year Terra Collection-in-Residence loan of six paintings and 30 works on paper from the Terra Foundation Collection and related programs. Artworks by 27 American artists, including Thomas Hart Benton, Edward Hopper, Winslow Homer, Clare Leighton, and William Zorach, are displayed in study galleries and are used for object-based teaching for students at several local universities. 

Woodmere Art Museum
$100,000
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
2023

To support Drawn to Music: The Art of Jerry Pinkney at the Woodmere Art Museum. The exhibition features approximately 75 works from throughout the career of Jerry Pinkney (1939– 2021), whose more than 100 illustrated books have reached millions globally. As a Black artist, Pinkney interpreted American history and identity through the lens of music throughout his career. The exhibition will be at Woodmere (September 2023–January 2024) and then at the Eric Carle Museum (February–July 2024), and it may travel to additional venues. Educational materials in a variety of formats for scholars, families, and teachers accompany the exhibition.

Springfield Museums
$25,000
Springfield, Massachusetts
2023

To support Nelson Stevens’ Color Rapping at the Springfield Museums. The exhibition centers Nelson Stevens (1938–2022), an early member of AfriCOBRA (African Commune of Bad Relevant Artists)—an art collective born out of the Black Arts Movement (BAM). Stevens brought the movement to Springfield in the 1970s. This exhibition features a survey of Stevens’s work across six decades, while reprising and honoring an essential period of Springfield’s history. This exhibition, curated by Treston Sanders, curator at University of Maryland Global Campus (UMGC), makes connections between Stevens’s work and his impact in Massachusetts. A scholarly catalogue accompanies the exhibition.

Museu de Arte de São Paulo
$75,000
São Paulo, Brazil
2023

To support Melissa Cody—Webbed Skies (working title) at the Museu de Arte de São Paulo (MASP). Melissa Cody (b.1983) is a Navajo artist who belongs to the fourth generation of artists in her family. Cody’s weavings are made using the traditional techniques of the Navajo people, passed down from generation to generation. This temporary exhibition is situated within a year-long curatorial program dedicated to Indigenous Histories, a theme that provides the thematic axis of the museum’s 2023 programs. It is also the first solo show of Melissa Cody’s work in Brazil and, after its installation at MASP, it will travel to venues in the United States. An English and Portuguese catalogue accompanies the exhibition.

Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art
$50,500
Washington, D.C.
2023

To support the planning process of Shifting Boundaries: New Views on American Landscapes at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art (NMAA). Shifting Boundaries offers an important new platform for previously underrepresented constituencies to consider human relationships to the natural world using the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art collections. Shifting Boundaries uses a model of community curation to make these works of art directly relevant to contemporary audiences through the lens of the environment. After the project, NMAA, with feedback from the curatorial group, will create a resource documenting the collaborative process, which will help both the institution and the field at large reflect on what worked well and what did not. This resource, which could take the form of a website or a conference presentation, aids other institutions considering similar projects.