THE ANDY WARHOL FOUNDATION for the Visual Arts announced recipients of its Spring 2021 grants, awarding $3.8 million to 50 organizations across the United States and Canada.

The grants are giving a new wave of established artists much deserved attention in the form of solo museum exhibitions. The Contemporary Arts Museum Houston is organizing “Feeling the Future,” a retrospective of photographer Ming Smith. In New York, the Museum of Arts & Design is planning a survey of Sonya Clark, a textile artist whose social practice considers issues of race, identity, and American history.

 


Warhol Foundation grants are supporting solo exhibitions of Sonya Clark and Fred Eversley, among others. | From left, Artist Sonya Clark. | Photo by Diego Valdez; and FRED EVERSLEY, “Untitled,” 1974 (parabolic lens). | Courtesy David Kordansky Gallery

 

In late 2022, the Orange County Museum of Art is reopening in a new building in Santa Ana, Calif. Forthcoming programming will include the exhibition “Reflect Back (the World),” exploring the contributions of Fred Eversley to the history of art in California and the Light & Space movement.

Grants are also supporting upcoming exhibitions with Senga Nengudi at Dia Art Foundation in New York, Faith Ringgold at the New Museum in New York, and Didier William at the Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami in Florida. In addition, group shows will examine the Great Migration at the Mississippi Museum of Art and anti-Black violence at the Block Museum of Art at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill., among other topics.

The grants fall into three categories: program support, exhibition support, and curatorial research. In the wake of the many challenges that resulted from the pandemic and recent social and political unrest, the grants provide critical support to artists, organizations, and their communities. Acknowledging the pressures and uncertainty they have endured, the foundation is permitting 50 percent of each grant to go toward administrative expenses.

“This is a time for deliberate movement towards more equitable structures inside and outside the art world.”
— Warhol Foundation President Joel Wachs

“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,” Warhol Foundation President Joel Wachs said 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.” CT

 
Highlights of the Spring 2021 Grants include:

Program Support

    Art21, New York, N.Y. – $100,000

    Ballroom Marfa, Marfa, Texas – $100,000

    Brandywine Workshop and Archives, Philadelphia, Pa. – $50,000

    Burnaway, Atlanta, Ga. – $80,000

    Los Angeles Nomadic Division, Los Angeles, Calif. – $50,000

    Recess, Brooklyn, N.Y. – $120,000

    Rivers Institute for Contemporary Art & Thought, New Orleans, La. – $60,000

    Washington Project for the Arts, Washington, D.C. – $100,000

Exhibition Support

    Block Museum of Art / Northwestern University, Evanston, Ill.
    A Site of Struggle: Making Meaning of Anti-Black Violence in American Art and Visual Culture – $100,000

    Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Va.
    Black Orpheus: Jacob Lawrence & the Mbari Club – $100,000

    The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, Ohio
    Currents & Constellations: Black Art in Focus – $35,000

    Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, Houston, Texas
    Ming Smith: Feeling the Future – $40,000

    Dia Art Foundation, New York, N.Y.
    Senga Nengudi – $75,000

    Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, Calif.
    The Condition of Being Addressable – $75,000

    Mississippi Museum of Art, Jackson, Miss.
    Artists’ commissions for The Great Migration – $100,000

    Museum of Arts and Design, New York, N.Y.
    Sonya Clark: Collective Encounters – $75,000

    Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami, North Miami, Fla.
    Didier William: Pictorial Moves of Revolution – $40,000

    New Museum, New York, N.Y.
    Faith Ringgold – $100,000

    Orange County Museum of Art, Santa Ana, Calif.
    Fred Eversley: Reflecting Back (the World) – $60,000

    Performa, New York, N.Y.
    Performa 2021 – $100,000

    Public Art Fund, New York, N.Y.
    Black Atlantic – $50,000

Curatorial Research:

    ONE National Gay and Lesbian Archives at the USC Libraries,Los Angeles, Calif.
    Alexis Bard Johnson, Joseph Hawkins, Susan Anderson and Cameron Shaw – $50,000
 
See full list of recipients
 

BOOKSHELF
“Sonya Clark: Monumental Cloth, The Flag We Should Know” was recently published. Presenting four decades of work, “Ming Smith: An Aperture Monograph” is the first comprehensive monograph of the photographer. “Faith Ringgold” is forthcoming from Glenstone Museum in August. Also consider “Senga Nengudi: Topologies.”

 

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