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Graham Foundation Announces Over $400,000 Architecture and Design Grants
Artist Theaster Gates was on the committee.
Caroline Elbaor
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The Graham Foundation, which turns 60 this year, is awarding architecture and design grants worth $419,000 to 31 projects around the world. The grants—split up into four categories—exhibitions, film/video/new media, public programs, and publications—include major museum retrospectives, site-specific commissions, art and architecture biennials, and boundary-breaking journals.
The Graham Foundation’s 11 Board of Trustees, which includes artist Theaster Gates and architect John Ronan, chose the winning applications. There were over 230 submissions from organizations in 24 countries, and their projects will be staged in cities such as New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Mexico City, Johannesburg, London, and Istanbul.
Yet, despite the international reach, many of the organizations hail from the US; no organizations from Asia were included, and only two Middle Eastern countries made the list. This was explained in a statement from the Graham Foundation: “In this round we only received 2 applications out of 230 from Asia and the Middle East, one of which was funded.” Moreover, at least 10 recipients are repeats from 2015, including New York’s Swiss Institute, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Jewish Museum, along with Chicago’s Lampo, and Serpentine Gallery in London.
Pierre Chareau, Maison de Verre, 1928-1932. Courtesy the Jewish Museum.
New organizations and projects include the 3rd Istanbul Design Biennial, curated by Beatriz Colomina and Mark Wigley (Colomina was also a 2015 grantee), a publication on Rifat Chadirji by the Arab Image Foundation in Beirut, and the Madison Square Park Conservancy in New York, with a public outdoor exhibition by artist Josiah McElheny. Monoambiente in Buenos Aires is the only organization included in the Film/Video/New Media category; it will use documents from the archive of the late Argentinian architect Amancio Williams to introduce his work to an international audience.
Claudia Gould, the director of the Jewish Museum, said the funding is going toward “Pierre Chareau: Modern Architecture and Design,” the first exhibition in the US devoted to the Maison de Verre architect, which debuts in November. The 2015 grant to the Jewish Museum was awarded for a survey exhibition of Brazilian architect Roberto Burle Marx that is currently on view at the museum through September 18.
The deadline for 2017 grants to organizations is January 25, 2017.
Rifat Chadirji, IRQ/314/154: Offices and stores, Tobacco Monopoly Administration, Baghdad, 1966. Courtesy of the Arab Image Foundation. From the 2016 Organizational Grant to Arab Image Foundation for Rifat
Chadirji: Architecture Photo Index.
A full list of recipients is below:
Anyone Corporation, New York, NY
Arab Image Foundation, Beirut, Lebanon
Architectural Association, London, UK
Art Institute of Chicago
The Bronx Museum of the Arts, New York, NY
California State University Long Beach-University Art Museum
Campo, Bogota, Colombia
Chicago Architecture Biennial
Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, MO
Guayaba Press, Mexico City, Mexico
Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts
The Jewish Museum, New York, NY
Lampo, Chicago, IL
LIGA-Space for Architecture, Mexico City, Mexico
Liverpool Biennial of Contemporary Art, UK
Los Angeles Forum for Architecture and Urban Design
Madison Square Park Conservancy, New York, NY
MAS Context, Chicago, IL
Monoambiente, Buenos Aires, Argentina
Museum of Contemporary Art, Tucson, AZ
The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY
National Building Museum, Washington, DC
Places Journal, San Francisco, CA
Project: A Journal for Architecture, Los Angeles, CA
Serpentine Gallery, London, UK
Society of Architectural Historians, Chicago, IL
Swiss Institute, New York, NY
Terreform, New York, NY
University of Chicago-Neubauer Collegium for Culture and Society & Smart Museum of Art
University of Johannesburg, South Africa
Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König, Cologne, Germany
