The Cheekwood Estate & Gardens, Nashville, TN, The Sculpture of William Edmondson: Tombstones, Garden Ornaments, and Stonework, $51,600
This monographic exhibition drawn from the permanent collection of the Cheekwood Estate & Gardens was the first large-scale museum examination of William Edmondson’s career in over twenty years. Drawing upon new scholarship to reevaluate the breadth of the artist’s sculptural output, the exhibition was centered on their collection of 22 Edmondson sculptures—the largest public collection of his work.

“Cheekwood was honored to present The Sculpture of William Edmondson: Tombstones, Garden Ornaments, and Stonework. Installed in the artist’s hometown of Nashville, Tennessee, the exhibition highlighted Cheekwood’s significant holdings of Edmondson and Edmondson-related works. The project’s goals were to present the exhibition, to publish an accompanying catalogue, and to complete a digitization initiative resulting in new scholarship around Edmondson’s work and exposing a broader audience to the artist’s legacy within the context of American art. The project highlighted Cheekwood’s significant art collection and encouraged audiences to engage with art and artists both in-person and virtually,” said Sarah Katherine Woodhull, Senior Manager of Institutional Relations, Cheekwood Estate & Gardens.

Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, WA, reinstallation of American art galleries, $75,000
The Seattle Art Museum says of its American art galleries reinstallation: “For the first time in 15 years, the Seattle Art Museum reinstalled its American art galleries, driven by a desire to reinterpret its historical collection to meet the present moment. Previously, the installation did not fully consider the many histories and perspectives that have driven cultural production in North America from the seventeenth century to World War II, particularly those in the Pacific Northwest. American Art: The Stories We Carry takes a dramatically different approach, bringing the historical American art collection into conversation with Native, Asian American, African American, Latinx, and contemporary art. Of note are a gallery curated by artist Inye Wokoma, and new commissions of work by Wendy Red Star and Nicholas Galanin, among others. This framework brings forward historically excluded narratives and artistic forms, opening up new opportunities for curiosity, critique, and connection. The results are indebted to an extensive collaboration among curators, staff, artists, community advisors, and supporters.”

Theresa Papanikolas, Ann M. Barwick Curator of American Art, Seattle Art Museum, added: “My hope for equity in the arts going forward is that the exploration never ends. Notions of equity are constantly going to change, and this is important work that we need to keep on doing.”

Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art, Indianapolis, IN, reinstallation of Native American Gallery, $75,000
Comprising around 400 objects drawn primarily from the Eiteljorg’s collection, augmented with select loans—and informed by the museum’s 30-plus-year-old Native American Advisory Council and consultation with local Native nations, tribal representatives, and artists—the reinstallation of the Native American Galleries is organized around the themes of relation, continuation, and innovation.

“With strong breath, our art speaks the voices of those who came before, through the hands of those who are now, for the ears of those who are yet to come. This new exhibition, Expressions of Life: Native Art in North America, is a rare and courageous celebration of those voices. The curators, artists, mountmakers, and curriculum developers all gathered in a communal and groundbreaking way to give full throat to those voices first and foremost. This is what the art deserves. It is what will fascinate the audiences. It is what the Eiteljorg had the courage to do. Come. Listen. Engage in the conversation. We are all welcome here,” said Karen Ann Hoffman (Oneida Nation of Wisconsin), whose work and storytelling are featured in the new galleries.

El Museo del Barrio, New York, NY, planning and development for collection reinstallation, $75,000
El Museo del Barrio in New York City held convenings and community-led scholarly workshops dedicated to promoting new perspectives on the institution’s holdings, with the aim of informing the reinstallation of the museum’s collection so that it reflects the rich diversity of Latinx art and visual culture.

El Museo del Barrio’s curatorial department expands on the exhibition planning and development conversations by observing: “Our primary focus with the Terra Foundation research grant was on a series of closed-door think tank discussions with the purpose of creating new perspectives and scholarship about the collection. These conversations, which took place in person and over Zoom during the spring of 2022, ultimately included more than 40 artists, community members, researchers, and museum professionals. In October 2022, we hosted a public-facing program. The six invited speakers contextualized El Museo’s unique collection within historical intersections of art, activism, and Latinx culture. Learnings from these events continue to guide our research process in preparation for an upcoming permanent-collection exhibition, opening in May 2023. Contributions from both think tank and symposium participants will be collected in a publication to accompany this exhibition.”

Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, Into View: Bernice Bing, $75,000
The exhibition Into View: Bernice Bing is the first rotation of the new exhibition series “Into View,” devoted to bringing pressing social issues in contemporary art into view. Celebrating the museum’s acquisition of 20 paintings and works on paper, the exhibition follows Bing’s career to consider how various stages of the artist’s life—including the influences of Richard Diebenkorn and Saburo Hasegawa and her Fulbright-supported trip to China in the 1980s to study calligraphy—were manifested in her art practice and community activism.

The Asian Art Museum added: “Into View: Bernice Bing is the first in an ongoing series of collection exhibitions championing the work of under-recognized modern and contemporary Asian American artists—part of the recent transformation of the Asian Art Museum that reimagined the visitor experience to more fully reflect the story of Asians in America. Bernice Bing—San Francisco-born, Chinese American, a woman, and a lesbian—created emotionally charged canvases, masterpieces of expressionism that grapple with her outsider status. But by incorporating personal letters, photos, and other intimate ephemera, curator Abby Chen offers audiences a rich, resonant portrait of the artist, one that radiates with Bing’s determination to build the inclusive, supportive artistic community she ultimately never had—a community the Asian Art Museum now proudly belongs to. Bing’s impact on the Bay Area cannot be overstated, and the more open, cross-cultural, and vibrant art scene we enjoy today is thanks, in part, to her life’s work.”

Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston, Boston, MA, Simone Leigh: Sovereignty, $150,000
Simone Leigh represented the United States at the 59th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, presenting Simone Leigh: Sovereignty, commissioned by the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston in cooperation with the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs. The large-scale sculptural works joined forms derived from vernacular architecture and the female body, rendering them via materials and processes associated with the artistic traditions of Africa and the African diaspora. Sovereignty mixes disparate histories and narratives, including those related to ritual performances of the Baga peoples in Guinea, early Black American material culture from the Edgefield District in South Carolina, and the landmark 1931 Paris Colonial Exposition.

“We are grateful to the Terra Foundation for American Art for supporting Simone Leigh: Sovereignty at the Venice Biennale and her upcoming survey exhibition,” said Jill Medvedow, Ellen Matilda Poss Director of the ICA. “Both presentations, as well as the forthcoming publication, expand the art historical canon to include overlooked narratives in U.S. histories. Leigh’s art addresses what the artist calls an “incomplete archive” of U.S. history and Black feminist thought, with sculpture that insists on visibility for the intellectual and physical contributions of Black women.”

KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin, Germany, Martin Wong: Malicious Mischief, $175,000
Martin Wong: Malicious Mischief is the first large-scale monographic exhibition in Europe of Chinese American artist Martin Wong. The foundation supported the show’s travel to four venues, featuring more than 100 artworks around thematic groupings of place, framing the artist as a key proponent of U.S. countercultural scenes.

“Martin Wong is recognized for his depictions of social, sexual, and political scenographies from the 1970s through 1990s in the U.S. Poetically weaving together narratives of queer existence, marginal communities, and urban gentrification, he stands out as an important countercultural voice,” said Krist Gruijthuijsen, Director of the KW Institute for Contemporary Art. “As the first extensive display of Wong’s works in Europe, Martin Wong: Malicious Mischief is initiated by the KW Institute for Contemporary Art and will be presented in four European institutions: Museo CA2M, KW, Camden Art Centre, and Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam. The support from the Terra Foundation for American Art means that KW, in partnership with the participating venues, can present a guiding voice in this discussion and become a platform for community outreach, which is imperative to our understanding of and work as contemporary art institutions.”

Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, MA, Devour the Land: War and American Landscape Photography since 1970, $100,000
Beginning its trajectory in the 1970s, this exhibition showcased connections between environmental activism and photography that expand to our contemporary moment through approximately 160 photographs across six thematic groupings.

Makeda Djata Best, the Richard L. Menschel Curator of Photography at Harvard Art Museums, observed: “Photography exhibitions on the environment are often not associated with curators of color. I hope this project helps to shift expectations around who works on what kinds of topics. Communities of color face distinct challenges, and while there has been activism around this issue, this is not included in the story of environmental photography. I wanted to broaden how we think about landscape, especially in urban areas, and to demonstrate that you don’t have to live in rural areas to be a part of the natural world.” Read more in an interview with Best.

FRONT Exhibition Company, Cleveland, OH, “The Art Futures Forum,” $25,000
This collaborative two-day convening featured conversation around how museums and other arts institutions can better reflect and serve the needs of their communities. The forum considered the scholarly work of art historians and the institutional exhibitions and programs that bring particular stories to life for the public.

“The goal of the project was to stir up much needed conversations around the role of visual arts institutions in equity and social justice. We engaged scholars, arts administrators, artists, community activists, arts leaders, and appreciators of the arts and brought them together for this two-day event, a collaboration between CWRU, Assembly for the Arts, and FRONT International. We discussed urgent issues of equity in the arts, specifically those around power and the ways that predominantly white art institutions can create more relevant and impactful programming reflective of the diverse needs, interests, and aspirations of Greater Clevelanders, with a focus on Black and Brown communities. The connections made that day are now fueling innovative, collaborative, and transformative projects or programs that will be funded by our region’s major foundations,” said Deidre McPherson, FRONT Director of Artistic and Community Initiatives.

Photography Network, New Brunswick, NJ, “Intersecting Photographies,” $30,000
The Photography Network says of its first in-person symposium, “Intersecting Photographies”: “[It] made the work of two extraordinary women, artist LaToya Ruby Frazier and art historian Tina Campt, come alive for an audience of hundreds of artists, curators, students, and scholars. It was an incredible opportunity to have these speakers, two of the most impressive figures working with photography today, appear both online and in person at Howard University’s Cramton Auditorium. Both exhorted the assembled community to use their work as platforms to, as Frazier put it, ‘spring forward for social justice and equity.’ The hybrid symposium drew together an international array of attendees united by their commitment to disentangling photography’s complicated legacy, and it established our newly formed organization as a leading-edge association dedicated to exploring the most compelling issues of our time.”

Museum of Vernacular Arts and Knowledge, Chicago, IL, Black Arts Movement School Modality, $25,000
Over the course of two weeks in August 2021, an intergenerational group of students, artists, and scholars from across the United States and around the world met over Zoom to learn about the Black Arts Movement (BAM) from a group of creatives who were central to its flowering in Chicago during the 1960 and ’70s. A nationwide movement led by Black artists and intellectuals, BAM called for creative expression reflecting pride in Black history and culture to awaken Black consciousness and achieve liberation.

The course, dubbed the Black Arts Movement School Modality by its creator, Romi Crawford, Professor of Visual and Critical Studies at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, explored ideas and knowledge structures that emerged from the movement in Chicago. In describing her goals for BAM School Modality, Crawford said, “The idea of ‘school’ was an important and recurring motif for BAM artists who organized free institutes, workshops, and other teaching and learning experiences in tandem with their artmaking. I wanted to capture the weight of this impulse that was so central to the movement, and to create space for the artists to teach what they know, because universities have not made room for them for systemic reasons.” Read more in a story about BAM School.

Soul of Nations Foundation, Florence, Italy, residency and professional development program at the Soul Center for the Arts, $150,000
Soul of Nations brings together an international cohort to co-create a semi-virtual, semi in-person program around shared Black and Native American diaspora experiences. Based in Italy, this program allows artist fellows to engage with local communities and bring new learnings, methods, and art back to the U.S. at the conclusion of their residencies.

Darnelle Casimir, Administrative Coordinator, Soul of Nations Inc., observed: “Soul of Nations endeavors to provide emerging and renowned Indigenous and Black visual artists from the United States and Italy with the opportunity to research the modern and historical juxtaposition of distinction and unification among American and European cultures, exhibit original works of art that further cross-cultural dialogue regarding the displaced BIPOC experience, and engage in public restorative healing practices and workshops in the birth country of Christopher Columbus, all the while unearthing the regal legacy of the Tuscan Prince—Alessandro de’ Medici—the first Black head of state in the modern Western world. Partnering with the Terra Foundation for American Art for Soul Center for the Arts’ exhibitions, residency, and humanities programs are helping to ensure the stability and expansion of this unique opportunity that fosters American arts and culture from a contemporary and sociocultural empathetic perspective. Together we can be the voice!”

IFF, Chicago, IL, Chicago’s Cultural Treasures, $1,000,000
Five Chicago-based philanthropic organizations—the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Joyce Foundation, the Polk Bros. Foundation, the Terra Foundation for American Art, and the Walder Foundation—provided $11.75 million in funding for Chicago’s Cultural Treasures, an initiative that supported 40 organizations that contribute to the history, culture, vibrancy, and identity of communities of color in greater Chicago. This regional program is part of the Ford Foundation’s larger America’s Cultural Treasures initiative to acknowledge and honor the diversity of artistic expression in the U.S.

South Side Community Art Center, Chicago, IL, a four-year project to expand the center’s capacity to preserve its art and archival collections, $750,000
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 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. “I view this grant as integral in helping the Center more effectively protect and reimagine both our archives and collections, and, importantly, to provide the type of sustainability that can be appreciated for generations to come.”

The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, NY, “Unearthing the Archive,” $1,000,000
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.”

Ashmolean Museum of Art & Archaeology / Terra Foundation for American Art, Oxford, UK, Terra Collection-in-Residence, $100,000
The world’s oldest university museum, opened in 1683, the Ashmolean at the University of Oxford, UK, uses the Terra Foundation artworks on loan to develop classes for undergraduate and graduate students, provide training and career-development opportunities for faculty and early-career researchers, and prompt new interpretations for permanent collection works. One painting and 37 prints are on loan for a period of four years (September 2022–September 2026).

“At the Ashmolean Museum in the University of Oxford, the Terra Collection-in-Residence has begun opening doors to exciting new teaching and new research. In a workshop, images by Mary Cassatt, Bertha Lum, and Arthur Dow were brought into dialogue with nineteenth-century Japanese prints, asking questions about the translation not only of language but also of images and ideas,” said Dr. Jim Harris, Teaching Curator, Ashmolean Museum Research Fellow, Somerville College, University of Oxford. “This year’s Terra Visiting Professor, Christopher Reed, is using the collection to help masters’ students consider the impact of Japanese print on early twentieth-century U.S. printmakers. Planning is underway for a day-conference this summer, bringing together early-career researchers from English literature, philosophy, history, and other disciplines to examine questions raised by the prints and their artists. And later this term, the museum will host two micro-internships for undergraduates who will work with the Terra Foundation prints to start researching and constructing a new, online resource for teaching modern American history at high school level.” Learn more about Terra Collection-in-Residence.

Georgia Art Museum / Terra Foundation for American Art, Athens, GA, Terra Collection-in-Residence, $100,000
The Georgia Museum of Art located at the University of Georgia in Athens, Georgia, opened in 1948, and holds collections of American art, European art, and decorative arts and works on paper for instruction and exhibition. The Terra Foundation loans are intended to fill gaps in the museum’s collection of American art and culture and activate individual artworks in the permanent collection. Five paintings are on loan for a period of four years (June 2022–June 2026).

“The Terra Collection-in-Residence program fills crucial gaps within our permanent collection galleries and amplifies the existing narratives we tell about the history of American art. [The Terra Foundation’s] John Singleton Copley portrait has fostered new, richer conversations between northern and southern colonial portraiture, which are traditionally segregated in the study of early American painting. Now, hanging alongside the southern portraitists Henry Benbridge and Jeremiah Theus, Copley’s painting helps us explore issues like transatlantic female identity and self-fashioning, including through a new partnership with the fashion history program at the University of Georgia,” said Jeffrey Richmond-Moll, Curator of American Art, Georgia Museum of Art. Learn more about Terra Collection-in-Residence. Learn more about Terra Collection-in-Residence.

The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL, long-term Terra Foundation collection loans
Since 2005, a rotating selection of works from the Terra Foundation collection has been on view at the Art Institute of Chicago. This partnership allows local, national, and international audiences to view objects from the collection and helps the Art Institute deepen and expand narratives of American art, inviting new interpretations throughout its Arts of the Americas galleries.

“With key loans from the Terra Foundation’s collection of paintings, our presentation of the arts of the Americas is truly enriched, broadening the representation of makers in our galleries while also playing to strengths. In the Art Institute’s recent [2022] reinstallation of American modernism, for instance, Marsden Hartley’s Painting No. 50 makes for an impactful sight line, participating in a dialogue about multiple modernisms in the early twentieth century—from Hartley in Berlin and Frank Lloyd Wright in the Midwest to Maria Martinez and Georgia O’Keeffe in the Southwest and Isamu Noguchi in Chicago, alongside many others,” said Annelise K. Madsen, Gilda and Henry Buchbinder Associate Curator
Arts of the Americas, The Art Institute of Chicago.