WARHOL FOUNDATION ANNOUNCES SPRING 2021 GRANTEES

With an eye toward organizations whose “programs and exhibitions reflect our current times and rethink existing structures and systems,” the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts has announced the recipients of its spring 2021 grants in support of visual arts programs, exhibitions, and curatorial research. The fifty museums and arts organizations represent twenty states; Washington, DC; and Canada, and will split $3.8 million in grant money meant to help them support artists and the community. Recognizing the effects of the Covid-19 crisis on arts institutions, as well as the galvanizing effect those institutions can have on their communities, the Warhol Foundation will continue to permit up to 50 percent of the money to be used to cover administrative expenses.

“The spring 2021 grantees are taking this extended moment of disruption to business-as-usual to revisit and revise their approaches to supporting artists and communities,” said foundation president Joel Wachs in a statement. “This is a time for deliberate movement towards more equitable structures inside and outside the art world. The foundation is committed to supporting organizations that amplify the voices of artists and position them at the center of critical conversations shaping our future.”

Sixteen of the fifty recipients are first-time grantees, and several of these are smaller organizations working collaboratively with artists to incubate ambitious projects.

Among them are Los Angeles Nomadic Division; Bozeman, Montana’s Mountain Time Arts; Tiger Strikes Asteroid, operating in five cities across the country; and the River Institute for Contemporary Art in New Orleans.

Of the nineteen museums, university galleries, and other arts organizations receiving grants assisting them in mounting large-scale exhibitions, a number are responding to the spirited outcry against racial injustice that has arisen globally since the May 2020 murder of George Floyd by the Minneapolis police. The Block Museum of Art, Northwestern University, will investigate the conceptual and aesthetic strategies artists have used to reckon with the anti-Black violence sanctioned by the US over the past century in “A Site of Struggle: Making Meaning of Anti-Black Violence in American Art and Visual Culture,” while at the Mississippi Museum of Art, fourteen artists will create work around the Great Migration of 1915–70, during which an estimated six million people fled racial terror in the South.

In keeping with the foundation’s core mission of supplying assistance to underrecognized and emerging artists, several institutions received grants earmarked for solo exhibitions. Among them are the Aldrich Museum, whose “Duane Slick: the Coyote Makes the Sunset Better” will be the first solo museum exhibition for the Meskwaki artist, and the Orange County Museum of Art, whose “Fred Eversley: Reflect Back (the World)” will highlight the important contributions the artist made to the history of art in California while further examining his role as one of the only artists of color in the Light & Space movement.

The full list of spring 2021 grantees is below.

Spring 2021 Grant Recipients Exhibition Support

The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield, CT ($75,000)

Exhibition program support

Block Museum of Art / Northwestern University, Evanston, IL ($100,000)

“A Site of Struggle: Making Meaning of Anti-Black Violence in American Art and Visual Culture”

Center for Maine Contemporary Art, Rockland, ME ($60,000)

Exhibition program support (over 2 years)

Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, VA ($100,000)

“Black Orpheus: Jacob Lawrence & the Mbari Club”

The Cleveland Museum of Art ($35,000)

“Currents & Constellations: Black Art in Focus”

Contemporary Arts Museum Houston ($40,000)

“Ming Smith: Feeling the Future”

Dia Art Foundation, New York ($75,000)

Senga Nengudi exhibition

Gallery 400 at The University of Illinois, Chicago ($100,000)

Exhibition program support (over 2 years)

Hawai’i Contemporary, Honolulu ($100,000)

Hawai’i Triennial 2022

Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles ($75,000)

“The Condition of Being Addressable”

Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum / Washington University, St. Louis ($75,000)

Nicole Miller exhibition

Mississippi Museum of Art, Jackson ($100,000)

Artists’ commissions for “The Great Migration”

Museum of Arts and Design, New York ($75,000)

“Sonya Clark: Collective Encounters”

Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami ($40,000)

“Didier William: Pictorial Moves of Revolution”

New Museum, New York ($100,000)

Faith Ringgold retrospective

Orange County Museum of Art, Santa Ana, CA ($60,000)

“Fred Eversley: Reflecting Back (the World)”

Performa, New York ($100,000)

Support for Performa 2021

Public Art Fund, New York ($50,000)

“Black Atlantic”

Weisman Art Museum, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis ($100,000)

SEEN exhibition and residency program support

Wexner Center for the Arts, Ohio State University, Columbus ($100,000)

Exhibition program support (over 2 years)

Spring 2021 Grant Recipients Curatorial Research

Arizona State University Art Museum, Tempe ($50,000)

Curatorial Research Fellowship: Elizabeth Armstrong

The Blackwood Gallery / University of Toronto, Mississauga, Canada ($50,000)

Curatorial Research Fellowship: Christine Shaw

Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center / Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY ($50,000)

Curatorial Research Fellowship: Vic Brooks and Nida Ghouse

Laguna Art Museum, California ($25,000)

Curatorial Research Fellowship: Sharrissa Iqbal, Cécile Whiting and Michael Duncan

ONE National Gay and Lesbian Archives at the USC Libraries, Los Angeles ($50,000)

Curatorial Research Fellowship: Alexis Bard Johnson, Joseph Hawkins, Susan Anderson and Cameron Shaw

Phoenix Art Museum ($50,000)

Curatorial Research Fellowship: Audrey Sands

Framing the Field/Visual Studies Workshop, Rochester, NY ($50,000)

Curatorial Research Fellowship: Allison Pappas and Natalie Zelt