Spotlight on Loans and Collection-Related Grants

The Collections team and Grants team at the Carl & Marilynn Thoma Foundation have been working together closely this year to better align our Loans and Grants programs. We are continuing to refine our applicant procedures and guidelines while streamlining interdepartmental coordination. We encourage prospective applicants to subscribe to our newsletter (in the footer of this page) and to check back frequently on our Loans page and our Collection-Related Grants site.  

In the meantime, we are proud to announce several recent Collections-Related exhibition grants that feature Thoma Collection loans: 

Dara Birnbaum: Reaction (Hessel Museum of Art at Bard College, Annadale-on-Hudson, NY) 

• Collection Artists Represented: Dara Birnbaum  
• Reaction is the first retrospective in the U.S. of the influential media and conceptual artist Dara Birnbaum. Planned in collaboration with the artist, the retrospective focuses on Birnbaum’s key single-channel pieces and major installations, from her earliest installation Attack Piece (1975) through her most recent Psalm 29(30) (2016).

Jeffrey Gibson: The Body Electric (SITE Santa Fe, Santa Fe, NM) 

• Collection Artists Represented: Jeffrey Gibson 
• The Thoma Collection is honored to be the lead funder for Jeffrey Gibson: The Body Electric. In The Body Electric, Jeffrey Gibson’s merging of artistic styles, and historical and contemporary cultural references synergizes to create vibrant, multilayered works of art that express the complexities and relationships between injustice, marginalization, and personal identity.  

Sums & Differences (LÁ Art Museum, Hveragerði, Iceland) 

• Collection Artists Represented: Gary Hill, Steina and Woody Vašulka
• We very rarely make grants outside the United States, but this unique exhibition will bring together three artists from our Digital & Media Art Collection, targeting a new (and younger!) European audience. Focusing on the work of Gary Hill, Steina and Woody Vašulka, Sums & Differences will present the commonalities of their earliest explorations and the subsequent divergence of their artistic practices, their conceptual, performative, and contemplative interpretations of the physical and the immaterial, along three unique trajectories reflecting their distinct sensibilities and unique syntaxes.  

I’ll Be Your Mirror (The Modern, Fort Worth, Texas) 

• Collection Artists Represented: Too many to list! A few highlights include: Cory Arcangel, Lynn Hershman Leeson, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Nam June Paik, Molly Soda, and Andy Warhol.
• This groundbreaking exhibition surveys more than forty-five years of groundbreaking artworks related to digital technology and the screen. I’ll Be Your Mirror will be the first exhibition of its kind in Texas, and one of a handful of exhibitions in the past decade that have explored new media. 

Federico Solmi: The Joie de Vivre (Morris Museum, Morristown, NJ)   

• Collection Artists Represented: Federico Solmi 
• In September of 2022, the Morris Museum will present a special exhibition by artist Federico Solmi in its Main Gallery. A leading contemporary artist who specializes in New Media, Solmi creates worlds that are vibrant, carnivalesque, and soaked with satire. His work examines unconscious human impulses and provides social and political commentary on Western society and its ties to nationalism, colonialism, religion, and consumerism. 

For more information on these projects, please visit our Previous Recipients page.  

Our next deadline for Collections-Related Grant Applications is August 1, 2022.  

If you have questions about our Collections-Related Grants don’t hesitate to reach out to us at grants@thomafoundation.org.