Darren Walker, President of the Ford Foundation, today announced that the Foundation has awarded the Studio Museum in Harlem an endowment grant of ten million dollars.
The money has been endowed to support and name in perpetuity the position of Director and Chief Curator.
Walker announced the grant at the Museum’s annual Gala, held this year at The Glasshouse and attended by a host of Trustees, philanthropists, artists, business and community leaders, and heads of cultural institutions.
The Foundation has made the grant on the occasion of Thelma Golden’s forthcoming twentieth anniversary as Director and Chief Curator of the Studio Museum and the opening of the institution’s new home in fall 2025. In recognition of the endowment grant, the position will now be titled The Ford Foundation Director and Chief Curator.
“For more than half a century, the Studio Museum in Harlem has been a vital platform for multiple generations of outstanding artists of African descent and, in so doing, has opened vast new areas of scholarship, creativity, and appreciation in the visual arts. The Ford Foundation is proud to support one of America’s Cultural Treasures’ work to serve artists and the public at large,” said Ford Foundation President Darren Walker. “It is especially fitting to endow the leadership position of Director and Chief Curator when the inimitable Thelma Golden is about to celebrate twenty years of proving to be the art world’s exemplary leader for courageous change.”
Thelma Golden said, “The Ford Foundation’s support has time and time again been integral to the Studio Museum’s many successes and evolutions. Under Darren Walker’s leadership, the Foundation has transformed the field of philanthropy while addressing inequality and social injustice in the United States and around the world. He has also led the way, through the America’s Cultural Treasures fund, in ensuring that arts organizations in the United States would be able to survive the challenges of the pandemic. All of us at the Studio Museum in Harlem are grateful for the Foundation’s extraordinary generosity—and I am personally deeply moved to be the first person within this institution to take up the title as The Ford Foundation Director and Chief Curator.”
Raymond J. McGuire, Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Studio Museum in Harlem, said, “Given the exemplary, visionary resolve that we have come to expect of Darren Walker and the Ford Foundation, this extraordinary grant comes at a critical moment for the Studio Museum, as we get close to completing our three hundred million dollar campaign goal for our new home. We are poised to fulfill this goal. When we do, we will think of the Ford Foundation’s endowment grant as era-defining. It ensures that from now on the leadership of the Studio Museum will stand peer to peer with the leadership of New York City’s other major cultural institutions. Our profound thanks go to the Foundation for being true advocates of the Studio Museum—a commitment that they have sustained for more than a decade.”
The Studio Museum in Harlem
The Studio Museum in Harlem is internationally known for its catalytic role in promoting the work of artists of African descent. The Studio Museum is now constructing a new home at its longtime location on Manhattan’s West 125th Street. Designed by Adjaye Associates with executive architect Cooper Robertson, the building—the first created expressly for the institution’s program—will enable the Studio Museum to better serve a growing and diverse audience, provide additional educational opportunities for people of all ages, expand its program of world-renowned exhibitions, effectively display its singular collection, and strengthen its trailblazing Artist-in-Residence program.
While the Museum is closed for construction, its groundbreaking exhibitions, thought-provoking conversations, and engaging art-making workshops continue at a variety of partner and satellite locations in Harlem and beyond. For more information, visit studiomuseum.org.
The Ford Foundation
The Ford Foundation is an independent organization working to address inequality and build a future grounded in justice. For more than eighty-five years, it has supported visionaries on the frontlines of social change worldwide, guided by its mission to strengthen democratic values, reduce poverty and injustice, promote international cooperation, and advance human achievement. Today, with an endowment of sixteen billion dollars, the foundation has headquarters in New York and ten regional offices across Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East.
Photo credit: The Ford Foundation.
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