2025


Museum of Vernacular Arts and Knowledge
$800,000
Chicago, IL
2025

To support organization planning and the expansion of the New Art School Modality (NASM), an innovative and affordable alternative to traditional art schools. NASM offers free or low-cost art and art history courses to a diverse community, emphasizing underrecognized art histories, forms, and learning methods. The program fosters collective teaching, intergenerational exchange, and collaborative approaches rooted in various cultural contexts.

College Art Association
$40,000
New York, NY
2025

The College Art Association (CAA) seeks support for its 113th and 114th Annual Conferences, taking place in 2025 and 2026. As the largest professional convening of artists, art historians, curators, designers, students, and visual art professionals, the “CAA Annual Conference” provides a space for dialogue, professional development, and the presentation of new research in the visual arts. While conference content evolves each year based on submissions, the study and creation of American art remains a core focus, offering opportunities to engage with a range of perspectives and expanding narratives in the field. Terra Foundation support will help sustain this convening as a platform for scholarship and critical discussion, particularly at a time of ongoing transformation in the study of American art. By bringing together practitioners and researchers, the conference fosters engagement with historical and contemporary issues, ensuring continued dialogue on the evolving role of American art within a broader cultural and global context.

Black Trustee Alliance for Art Museums
$30,000
New York, NY
2025

Funding supports trustee education and mentorship, research on systems change within museums, advocacy for advancing inclusion in the arts, and year-round programming to strengthen Black Trustee Alliance’s network of nearly 200 Black trustees, artists, philanthropists, and cultural leaders. These efforts are intended to drive institutional transformation toward greater inclusion and equity in the arts.

Rebuild Foundation
$125,000
Chicago, IL
2025

Building on fifteen years of artist-led, community-based work, Theaster Gates and Rebuild Foundation will undertake a year of strategic planning and experimentation to refine the organization’s vision, respond to evolving community needs, and explore new models for programming and engagement. During this pivotal year, “Rebuild” will pause public programming to focus on developing infrastructure, testing new approaches to archival engagement, and strengthening community collaboration. This planning process will lay the foundation for “Rebuild’s” next chapter, centering artist residencies, archival stewardship, land management, pedagogy, and craft. Through ongoing experimentation and strategic planning, “Rebuild” will chart a path forward as a vital hub for Black artistic innovation and cultural preservation on Chicago’s South Side.

Afield
$50,000
Paris, France
2025

To support the multi-year AFIELD forums on the themes of “Transitional Justice by Artists” (2025) and “Institutions by Artists” (2026) hosted by KANAL—Centre Pompidou in Brussels, Belgium, the Kunstenfestivaldesarts, and AFIELD, an international network of artists-led initiatives. These convenings connect American and international artists as well as curators, cultural practitioners, policymakers, students, and the public interested in the role of art as leverage for solution-building and societal transformation. Drawing from the forums, a publication, to be released in 2026, will critically explore the intersection between art, history, and social justice, highlighting the role of art and artists in addressing societal and cultural challenges.

Allied Media Projects Inc.
$50,000
Detroit, MI
2025

“For Real For Real” is an exhibition held at DAAD in Berlin in spring 2025 presenting the work of contemporary artists such as Alexandra Bell, Mel Chin, Theaster Gates, Saidiya Hartman, Tuan Andrew Nguyen, Martine Syms, Kara Walker or Carrie Mae Weems, whose practice engages with the ordinariness of our individual lives. In addition, Claudia Rankine will lead community-driven workshops and a publication project focused on storytelling involving students from Bard College Berlin and Dartmouth among others.

Black Artists Archive
$125,000
Detroit, MI
2025

The Black Artists Archive will create a physical and digital archive to preserve the legacies of Black artists from Detroit and the Midwest. The goal of the Black Artists Archive is to create a space where Black artists and curators can preserve their legacies and research with support and long-term investment, creating and sustaining practice change in the space of traditional museums or archival centers that continue to operate within exclusionary frameworks rooted in colonial practices and systemic barriers. Over a year and a half, the Black Artists Archive will implement Phase One of its archive development plan by designing and launching its website, which will be the central location for the digital archives and the main resource for locating physical materials. The first archive slated for digitization is that of the Arts Extended Gallery, a Black arts organization founded in Detroit in 1952. Next steps will involve audience research; conducting stakeholder interviews; and expanding the collection through oral histories and adding other relevant collections. Future phases of the Black Artists Archive include establishing the Black Curatorial Institute to advance new approaches to curatorial and archival practice, as well as an incubator residency to create interdisciplinary dialogues between curators and artists in Detroit.

First Light Alaska
$15,000
Anchorage, AK
2025

To support “Curating the North 2025,” a three-day gathering organized by the Alaska Native Museum Sovereignty group, taking place in Anchorage, Alaska and scheduled April 1-3, 2025. Prepared in collaboration with the Arctic Culture Lab, the Anchorage Museum and the Alaska Native Heritage Center the event features artist workshops, panel discussions, think tanks, and a pop-up exhibition focused on land-based curation. Alaska Native scholars, artists, and museum professionals, Indigenous curators from other northern communities, as well as Indigenous curators from other northern communities, such as Canada, Greenland, and Sápmi are also invited to share their knowledge. Information about the project will be shared on the Arctic Culture Lab’s webpage and may be featured in First American Art Magazine, with plans to document the event through photographs and a brief overview.

The Chinati Foundation
$18,000
Marfa, TX
2025

To support “Ch’íná’itíh (Chinati) Intertribal Noise Symposium 2025,” a semi-annual gathering of Native American sound artists working at the experimental edges of the sonic arts. Co-presented by The Chinati Foundation and Atomic Culture in Marfa, Texas, from March 14 to 16, 2025, the convening features listening sessions, performances, conversations, and community gatherings at venues across Marfa. The symposium aims to acknowledge and examine the complexity and diversity of contemporary Indigenous sonic practices, focusing on collaborative research and engagement and highlights Native American sonic agency while fostering cross-disciplinary dialogue on the intersections of sound, art, and resistance. The program will have a website, and an audio and video recording.

Native Arts and Cultures Foundation
$20,000
Portland, OR
2025

To support “2025 NACF Convening” program consisting of a series of one-day, in-person gatherings across locations including Santa Fe, Phoenix, Juneau, and Seattle, as well as at the NACF’s own Center for Native Arts and Cultures in Portland, Oregon, from March 1 through December 31, 2025. These events engage Native artists, leaders, and scholars in dialogues about contemporary Native arts and cultures, focusing on advancing visibility, fostering professional development, and creating spaces for cultural exchange. Emphasizing relationship-building and knowledge exchange, these gatherings aim to deepen connections and expand the influence of Native arts across the field. This in-person event is also recorded; the videos shared on NACF’s social media platforms and through our email newsletters. A quarterly publication, available in digital and printed edition, will detail and celebrate the convenings.

El Paso Museum of Art
$20,000
El Paso, TX
2025

“Latinx Muralism Exchange: El Paso, TX and Los Angeles, CA” is a three-day convening hosted by the El Paso Museum of Art (EPMA), coinciding with the annual Borderland Jam Public Graffiti and Art Show (May 23–25, 2025). The program brings together artists, academics, and community members to explore muralism’s legacy in Latinx art, the intersections of cultural identity and public art, and murals as platforms for social activism. A publication and digital catalogue will document the convening, ensuring accessibility to wider audiences through EPMA’s website and associated platforms.

Newberry Library
$25,000
Chicago, IL
2025

To support “Say It with Pictures: Black Photography, Chicago, and the Great Migration,” a project bringing together scholars, curators, and community members for a one-day in-person event at the Newberry Library in Chicago in the fall of 2025. This ongoing, multi-faceted project explores the under-recognized impact of African American commercial photographers working in Chicago between 1890 and the 1930s. Key topics of discussion include exhibition content and learning goals, publication content and format, strategies for community engagement, and areas for further scholarly exploration. This closed convening will inform an exhibition on view at the Newberry Library in 2027, shape an accompanying publication, and encourage participants to think expansively about “Say It with Pictures” as a collaborative, continuing project.