Terra Foundation Exhibition Grants – United States

Terra Foundation Exhibition grants provide support for organizations to plan and present temporary exhibitions comprised primarily of loans.

The Terra Foundation encourages proposals from organizations (e.g., museums, art centers, and community-based cultural organizations) of varying sizes and annual budgets and representing the full spectrum of geographic regions, within and outside the United States.

Priorities and Goals

• The Terra Foundation supports visual arts projects with a focus on art of the United States and Indigenous art of North America that question and broaden understandings of American art and transform how its stories are told.
• They encourage projects that:
  • generate knowledge and interpretive frameworks that reflect the range and complexity of American art and its histories through the diversity of artists represented, voices included, and stories told
  • center artists, scholars, and communities who have been systemically excluded from narratives, practices, and presentations of American art
  • commit to inclusive and equitable practices across project development and implementation in order to lead to structural change
• They also encourage multilingual written materials when possible and relevant to the project and/or its audiences.

Funding Information

• They anticipate that individual grants will range between $25,000 and $200,000, with an average grant size of $100,000. This is a highly competitive program, and they are unable to fund all eligible and positively reviewed projects.

What They Fund

• Grants will offset planning and/or implementation costs for:
  • temporary exhibitions primarily comprising artworks that are not part of the institution’s permanent collection
  • research and planning for temporary exhibitions (e.g., convenings, travel, research fellows or assistants, advisory groups)

Eligibility Criteria

• For this program, the Terra Foundation accepts proposals only from institutions with United States 501(c)(3) status or its international equivalent. Only the exhibition organizer(s) may apply for support. If co-organizing a temporary exhibition with a partner museum, the co-organizers are encouraged to apply jointly. If co-organizers do not apply jointly, know that they only accept one letter of inquiry per project, from whichever organization applies first (even if that letter of inquiry does not get invited to the proposal stage). Grants are not made to individuals.
• Through its Exhibitions program, the Terra Foundation is pleased to provide support for organizations to plan and present temporary exhibitions comprised primarily of loans. Grants may be used for costs associated with planning, research, interpretation, artist fees (except for commissions), shipping, crating, couriers, insurance, object loan fees, construction of temporary gallery walls, conservation/framing, programs, marketing, and dissemination of research, whether virtual or print. They are also happy to support related staff positions (up to 25% of the award amount) and indirect costs (up to 15% of the award amount).

Ineligible

• Currently, the Exhibitions grant program at the Terra Foundation does not accept proposals for:
  • the creation or acquisition of existing or commissioned artwork.
  • acquisitions or capital expenditures or permanent equipment (including technology, construction other than temporary gallery walls, contracted exhibition or architectural design, exhibition furniture/vitrines, etc.).
  • exhibitions that are exclusively online
  • exhibitions previously opened that are touring to new venues
  • exhibitions previously declined by the Terra Foundation.

For more information, visit Terra Foundation for American Art.