2024-2025 Museum Exhibition Co-sponsorships

Indoors and/or virtual exhibition co-sponsorships

Note: For the balance of 2024 we will focus on grants targeted towards intensively enhancing online content for specific exhibitions, present and past. In January 2025 we will accept inquiries for exhibits in physical galleries in that year.

We:

- are interested in co-sponsorship grants to select museums and cultural centers throughout the United States concerning American representational art special/temporary exhibitions, either online and/or indoors, featuring artworks based on our topics. Our focus is one-off or touring monographs or retrospectives featuring an artist's representational artworks, retro-enhancing online materials for previous exhibits and online-only exhibits.

- strongly favor grants to institutions whose policy is to post online numerous exhibit-specific materials concerning future, current and past exhibitions in the exhibitions section of their websites. If an institution has not yet added necessary information about an exhibition at the time of its posting of an upcoming exhibit, yet is committed to add such material when the future exhibition becomes current and retains it when the exhibition is transferred to the past exhibitions section of its website, we will take that into consideration.

- require institutions to make online catalogs, brochures and gallery guides available to the public without charge, while paper printed copies remain monetized, one reason being that "coffee table" catalogs appeal to an audience largely separate from viewers of online versions: mainly students and teachers. A Survey of Online Exhibition Catalogues, Brochures, Gallery Guides and Related Materials contains examples freely available to the public. These institutions decided that freely available online brochures and catalogs - optionally locked out for download or content copying - broadly serve the global public, aren't materially detrimental to their net operating income and serve to further their mission statement education component.

- are amenable to co-sponsoring either single out of pocket line items or general exhibit support.

- welcome your letter of inquiry aligned with our grant preferences, followed by further steps leading to funding, subject to inquiry timing.

- currently have no deadline for submission of further steps materials.

General observations

Thanks to the convenience and ever-increasing quality (e.g. close-ups, 360 degree rotation) of product presentation for online shopping, many brick and mortar retail stores have taken a beating. Sears was an early casualty. Many are limping along. Amazon is winning. Consumer behavior may spill over into other types of physical presence. Gen Z and Millennial cohorts, when compared to older groups, may favor seeking knowledge online before - or ever - considering physical visitation. The onsite education model is experiencing drift towards online learning. If an institution's mission statement includes education covering all age cohorts, attention needs to be paid to preferences of younger cohorts.

During the 2020-22 pandemic, virtual tours became a popular museum tool to emulate physical presence when they were closed. Since then, some museums have continued to feature them, while others have stopped. We find that virtual tours based on photographs of gallery room walls and floor spaces can be highly useful in gaining a broad understanding and appreciation of the onsite presentation. Some institutions believe that well-crafted online exhibit materials will deter likely onsite visitors from visitation. We believe the opposite is true.

The rise of large language models, containing data scraped from websites, provides yet another vehicle for students and the general public to gain knowledge on a plethora of subjects including American art. Millions of words on our website, especially from our Resource Library, have been scraped by AI firms. As a result, blending of our content with thousands of other sources provides limitless AI-generated texts available for education. Your addition of online content adds further value to this smorgasbord of facts.

In recent years it has become increasingly difficult for university students to justify a major or minor in art history from an economic point of view. Since familiarity with the liberal arts is beneficial for a well-rounded education, we advocate for institutions to provide an online, in-depth resource which may be accessed at leisure during an individual's lifetime.

Gallery environmental enhancement

The de Young Museum in San Francisco has held Bouquets to Art for 39 years. The exhibit pairs floral designs with artworks, allowing visitors to engage with the museum's collections "in new ways." Minneapolis Institute of Art has Art in Bloom. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston holds a similarly named event. Besides advancing artistic synergy, the combination of botanical design and art attracts visitors which may not otherwise experience an institution's artworks. We are amenable to contributing to exhibits that feature this combination in concert with our other content preferences as long as the botanical element extends during the entire life of the exhibits.

Relevant quotes

"There is no greater purpose for art than to move you, to elevate your mood, to make you think, to remind you of places you have been or places you want to build. It does everything - nourishes the soul and lifts the spirits of the people."

- Adriana Trigiani

"The essence of all beautiful art, all great art, is gratitude."

- Friedrich Nietzsche

To my mind a picture should be something pleasant, cheerful and pretty. There are too many unpleasant things in life as it is, without creating still more of them"

- Pierre-Auguste Renoir

"Beauty is an intangible thing; cannot be fixed on the surface, and the wear and tear of old age on the body cannot defeat it. Nor will a "pretty" face make it, for "pretty" faces are often dull and empty, and beauty is never dull and it fills all spaces."

- Robert Henri, The Art Spirit

So while our art cannot, as we wish it could, save us from wars, privation, envy, greed, old age, or death, it can revitalize us amidst it all."

- Ray Bradbury, preface to Zen in the Art of Writing (1990).

"We plant seeds that will flower as results in our lives, so best to remove the weeds of anger, avarice, envy, and doubt, that peace and abundance may manifest for all."

- Dorothy Day

"Beauty will save the world."

- Dostoevsky

Other grants

Grants for evening outdoor projection exhibits and outdoor murals are also of interest to us.

Return to Financial Assistance Programs

revised 8/20/24

Links to sources of information outside of our web site are provided only as referrals for your further consideration. Please use due diligence in judging the quality of information contained in these and all other web sites. Information from linked sources may be inaccurate or out of date. TFAO neither recommends or endorses these referenced organizations. Although TFAO includes links to other web sites, it takes no responsibility for the content or information contained on those other sites, nor exerts any editorial or other control over them. For more information on evaluating web pages see TFAO's General Resources section in Online Resources for Collectors and Students of Art History.