The Terra Foundation awarded 74 grants in June 2022, amounting to a total of over $7 million, to support projects that question and broaden understandings of American art and engage in transforming how the story of American art is told.
The grants listed below support a range of projects, including convenings, permanent collection reinstallation planning and implementation, and teaching and research, along with the Terra Collection in Residence program and strategic initiatives. The foundation is investing in the work of organizations through strategic projects that support transformative change in the field of American art through interdisciplinary and collaborative engagement. Two such organizations are the Studio Museum in Harlem and the South Side Community Art Center in Chicago.
Since it opened in 1968, the Studio Museum in Harlem has championed Black art and culture. Through its exhibitions, education and public programs, publications, events, permanent collection, artist-in-residence program, and many other activities, the Studio Museum has defined historical themes and concepts, set scholarly standards, and provided support for generations of artists. Unearthing the Archive marks the first time the Studio Museum has comprehensively researched and shared its history and legacy in the shaping of American art. Initiated as the museum constructs its new building to meet the needs of the institution and its communities, Unearthing the Archive is a research, archival, and publication project that investigates the museum’s past to better understand its role as a nexus for Black art in Harlem.
“The history of Black visual culture has for too long been uneven and underrepresented, due in part to a lack of primary materials,” said Thelma Golden, Director and Chief Curator of The Studio Museum in Harlem. “Our Unearthing the Archive project, undertaken as the Studio Museum prepares to open its first purpose-built home in more than half a century of operation, will create change by mining a resource that exists nowhere else: our unparalleled abundance of documents and related holdings of Black artists working over the past 50 years. We are deeply grateful to the Terra Foundation for its generous support of this project, which advances a goal our two institutions share: the aim of introducing deeper research into American art history and expanding its canon.”
The nation’s only continuously operated community art center established as part of the Works Progress Administration, Chicago’s South Side Community Art Center (SSCAC) was created in 1940 by Black artists and remains a vital cultural resource, presenting exhibitions, programs, and events that engage audiences with Black art and artists. The Terra Foundation’s grant supports a four-year project to expand SSCAC’s capacity to preserve its art and archival collections and to make these collections and the stories they tell accessible to the public and to researchers. The collection features art by individuals who were instrumental in SSCAC’s founding and by many others with strong connections to the institution.
“I am thrilled beyond measure to receive this grant to reconstruct both the capacity, practices, and protocols for our archives and collections. The Center’s archives proudly house thousands of documents, ephemera papers, photographs, and slides from past stakeholders and contributors that reflect the diverse art history of Chicago’s South Side community and the broader narratives of Black Art History around the country,” said Monique Brinkman-Hill, Executive Director of the South Side Community Art Center.
“Our powerful art collection holds over five hundred objects ranging from the earlier parts of the twentieth century up through the twenty-first century. This grant will allow us the chance to physically modernize the storage spaces for the materials and objects in our collections with state-of-the-art equipment and improve environmental controls for objects. It will also allow us to hire two new full-time staff members to help establish proper protocols and regulations, process acquisitions and cataloging, grow our collections’ capacity, and work to preserve the physical objects we hold and the histories and legacies they tell. I view this grant as integral in helping the Center more effectively protect and reimagine both our archives and collections and importantly provide the type of sustainability that can be appreciated for generations to come.”
For all foundation grants awarded, and more information about the grants, please see the grants database.
June 2022 Grants Awarded
Strategic Initiatives
The foundation partners with organizations that are committed to inclusive and equitable practices and that engage research and learning models with the potential to offer new perspectives for the fields of American art.
American Academy in Rome, Rome, Italy, two six-month fellowships for early- and mid-career Chicago-based artists who identify as BIPOC, $159,400
Kunstinstituut Melly, Rotterdam, Netherlands, “Tools for De-modernizing,” a collective learning program, $78,180
New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York, New York, programs and catalogue production developed in conjunction with the exhibition Theaster Gates: Young Lords and Their Traces, $75,000
Palais de la Porte Dorée, Paris, France, “Sharing Museums,” a three-day event featuring a series of roundtables, $73,651
Serpentine Galleries, London, United Kingdom, Black Chapel, the 2022 Serpentine Pavilion, $75,000
Skowhegan School for Painting and Sculpture, Maine, The Skowhegan Book (working title), $75,000
Soul of Nations Foundation, Florence, Italy, a residency and professional development program at the Soul Center for the Arts, $150,000
South Side Community Art Center, Chicago, Illinois, a four-year project to expand the center’s capacity to preserve its art and archival collections, $750,000
The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, United States, “Unearthing the Archive,” $1,000,000
Voices in Contemporary Art, New York, New York, three-year pilot initiative “Native Voices,” $100,000
Convenings
The foundation supports convenings worldwide that foster exchange and collaboration, such as workshops, symposia, and colloquia.
Chicago Humanities Festival, Chicago, Illinois, two programs on American art, $30,000
Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, California, convening series “Indigenous Voices in Film,” $25,000
FRONT Exhibition Company, Cleveland, Ohio, two-day symposium “Recentered Periphery: An Inclusive Future of Art History,” $25,000
Goethe-Universität (Institut für Ethnologie/Dept. of Social and Cultural Anthropology), Frankfurt am Main, two-day symposium, “Tithu Between Wor(l)ds. Cultural Items as Art or Artifact,” $35,000
Heard Museum, Phoenix, Arizona, symposium “Remembering the Future,” $25,000
Museum of Vernacular Arts and Knowledge, Chicago, Illinois, East and West Coast iterations of the Black Arts Movement School Modality two-week virtual course, $50,000
National Museum of Mexican Art, Chicago, Illinois, convening of the Mexican Cultural Arts Alliance, $21,000
Photography Network, New Brunswick, New Jersey, symposium “Intersecting Photographies,” $30,000
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC, four hybrid convenings “Discussing the Shape of Power,” $24,955
University of California, Los Angeles, California, conference and workshop series “The Forgotten Canopy,” $25,000
University of Delaware, Newark, Delaware, convening presented as part of “Conduit: Black Art Preservation Project,” $25,000
Washington Project for the Arts, Washington, DC, three-day research-based convening “How can we gather now?,” $15,000
Winterthur Museum, Garden and Library, Winterthur, Delaware, two-day symposium “Shifting Tides: Art in the 18th century Caribbean,” $29,652
Re-envisioning Permanent Collections
These grants support permanent collection reinstallation planning and implementation as well as the development of temporary exhibitions drawn from museum collections. The grant program is now called Collections Grants.
Ackland Art Museum, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, Unsettled Things: Art from an African American South, $75,000
Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York, Marisol: A Retrospective, $75,000
Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, San Francisco, California, Into View: Bernice Bing, $75,000
Arizona State University Art Museum, Tempe, Arizona, Making Visible, $75,000
Autry Museum of the American West, Los Angeles, California, Three Views, $75,000
Berkeley Art Museum & Pacific Film Archive, Berkeley, California, exhibition featuring recent bequest of more than 3,000 quilts, $50,000
Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center, Colorado Springs, Colorado, Signs of the Americas, $63,000
Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum, New York, New York, Design, Texture, Color: Dorothy Liebes and American Modernism (working title), $75,000
David and Alfred Smart Museum of Art, Chicago, Illinois, Monochrome Multitudes, $40,000
Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, Michigan, reinstallation of the Native American art galleries, $75,000
Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, San Francisco, California, reinstallation of the Native American art galleries, $75,000
Foundation of the State University of New York at Binghamton, Inc., Binghamton, New York, Ed Wilson: The Sculptor as Afro-humanist, $72,000
Friends of the Elisabet Ney Museum, Austin, Texas, reinstallation at Formosa, the historic home and studio of Elisabet Ney, $40,000
Gilcrease Museum, Tulsa, Oklahoma, planning for the Gilcrease Museum’s new core galleries of American art, $75,000
Heard Museum, Phoenix, Arizona, Arriving Forever Into the Present World, $75,000
High Museum of Art, Atlanta, Georgia, Patterns in Abstraction: Aesthetic Innovation in African American Quilts, $75,000
Illinois State Museum, Springfield, Illinois, exhibition and catalogue showcasing works by Illinois artists identifying as African American, Asian American, Indigenous, and/or LGBTQ, $50,000
Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Center for Visual Arts, Stanford, California, East of the Pacific: Making Histories of Asian American Art, $75,000
Milwaukee Art Museum, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Native Voices: Art of the American West Reinterpreted, $50,000
Mingei International Museum, San Diego, California, Textures and Tones—Stitching America, $75,000
Mississippi Museum of Art, Jackson, Mississippi, New Symphony of Time, $75,000
Montclair Art Museum, Montclair, New Jersey, reinstallation of historical and contemporary Native American artworks, $75,000
Museum of Indian Arts and Culture, Santa Fe, New Mexico, Horizons: Weaving Between the Lines with Diné Textiles, $75,000
Museum of Nebraska Art, Kearney, Nebraska, In Search of Ourselves, $75,000
National Portrait Gallery, Washington, DC, Out of Many: Portraits from 1600 to 1900, $75,000
Neuberger Museum of Art, Purchase, New York, planning for a collection reinstallation that brings together the museum’s collections of American modern and contemporary art and African art, $75,000
New Orleans Museum of Art, New Orleans, Louisiana, reinstallation of American art galleries, $75,000
North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh, North Carolina, reinstallation of American art galleries, $75,000
Ohio State University Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum, Columbus, Ohio, collection reinstallation, $75,000
Patricia & Phillip Frost Art Museum, Miami, Florida, Together/Apart: Modern and Contemporary Art of the United States, $75,000
Phillips Collection, Washington, DC, planning for an exhibition at the Phillips Collection of selections from its collection alongside artworks from the Howard University Gallery of Art, $70,000
Plains Art Museum, Fargo, North Dakota, Continuity of Culture, $70,000
Portland Museum of Art, Portland, Maine, reinstallation of American art galleries, $75,000
Princeton University Art Museum, Princeton, New Jersey, Object Lessons in American Art, $75,000
Rhode Island School of Design Museum of Art, Providence, Rhode Island, reinstallation of the museum’s modern and contemporary art and design collections, $75,000
Riverside Art Museum, Riverside, California, development of an exhibition program for the new Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art and Culture, $75,000
Speed Art Museum, Louisville, Kentucky, reinstallation of the Kentucky Gallery, $75,000
Tampa Museum of Art, Tampa, Florida, Purvis Young: Redux, $20,000
Tucson Museum of Art and Historic Block, Tucson, Arizona, More Than: Expanding Artists Identities from the American West, $75,000
University of Nevada, Reno Foundation, Reno, Nevada, Lilley Co-Lab, an interactive planning project to inform the museum’s new permanent collection display, $75,000
University of New Mexico Foundation, Albuquerque, New Mexico, HINDSIGHT/INSIGHT: Reflecting on the Collection, $75,000
University of Wyoming Art Museum, Laramie, Wyoming, 50-year anniversary exhibition, which explores the museum’s place in the American West, $43,000
Weisman Art Museum of the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota, planning for a reinstallation of the American art collection, $75,000
Westmoreland Museum of American Art, Greensburg, Pennsylvania, planning for the reinterpretation and reinstallation of the permanent collection galleries, $75,000
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, New York, A Very Long Line: Migration, Displacement, and the Struggle for Land and Refuge (working title), $75,000
Terra Collection in Residence
The Terra Foundation loans artworks from its collection for extended periods to academic museums in the United States and international museums with strong connections to universities through Terra Collection in Residence.
Ackland Art Museum, Chapel Hill, NC / Terra Foundation for American Art, $100,000
Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, MA / Terra Foundation for American Art, $100,000
Teaching and Research
The Terra Foundation offers a range of fellowship opportunities for scholars, including academic awards, research fellowships, and visiting professorships.
Courtauld Institute of Art, London, United Kingdom, programs of the Centre for American Art, $199,334
Freie Universität Berlin, Berlin, Germany, two eight-month visiting professorships, $141,500
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC, research fellowships, $327,800
University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom, two year-long visiting professorships, $397,200
