Teiger Foundation Backs U.S. Curators With $4 Million

The foundation's Executive Director, Larissa Harris, offered insights into her thinking about why a given exhibition should get made.

The Teiger Foundation today announced the 50 curators of contemporary art at 33 American institutions who will receive financial support totalling over $4 million. The money will go towards executing exhibitions and implementing sustainability initiatives.

Among the funded projects are the first survey of Christine Sun Kim, which is being co-developed by curators at the Whitney and Walker Art Center, and the Hammer Museum's first major show focused on indigeneity, which will be curated by Pablo José Ramirez.

The Teiger Foundation was founded in 2008 by David Teiger, a New Jersey management consultant and art collector who died in 2014. They received around 500 applications this year, up from 400 in 2023.

Choosing which curators and projects to back is a gargantuan task, according to Larissa Harris, Teiger Foundation's Executive Director and a former curator at MoMA PS1, MIT, and the Queens Museum.

She said criteria for selection include innovation—is there a new conceptual frame, or a new understanding of an artist, idea, or period?—and alignment, asking why it makes sense to back this curator, this artist, and this art organisation at this moment in time.

Their application form asks curators to explain the thinking behind their exhibition project and to write about a past project so that the jurors can get a sense of their trajectory because, 'we believe in curators having a practice that they can articulate.'

'Certain strategies are interesting to me,' Harris added, citing an exhibition of Hmong photographer Pao Houa Her that's a collaboration between Lauren Dickens at San José Museum of Art and Jodi Throckmorton at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center in Wisconsin.

'The reason it's innovative is that those shows are going to be on view at the same time,' she said.

Finding ways to maximise the audience for a really excellent exhibition is a priority.

'I just hate seeing great ideas go to waste,' Harris said. 'I have seen so many shows that I had to travel to see. What about the rest of the United States, or the rest of the world?'

Institutions are typically funded to tour their shows, replicating them in new locations, but the Teiger Foundation introduced a funding category called 'hosting', which encourages the receiving institution to think about how they can localise an exhibition for maximum impact.

She's also enthusiastic about an exhibition, titled MONUMENTS, that will take place in the autumn of 2025. It's a collaboration between Hamza Walker at the Brick, MOCA's Bennett Simpson, and artist Kara Walker to present decommissioned Confederate monuments along with a contemporary art exhibition.

That's a politically charged project, but Harris said, 'I have a lot of trust in those particular people, and their combined experience and creativity makes me feel really comfortable about funding that.'

Harris noted that 'curators' jobs are more complex than ever, and it's hard to be in public'.

In future, she hopes the Foundation can support them to meet up and find strategies for navigating external and internal pressures to make better, bolder shows.

'Having more spaces where people can connect with one another is really important,' she said. —[O]