Following June’s announcement of the Graham Foundation’s 2021 individual grant recipients, the Chicago-based nonprofit dedicated to fostering “the development and exchange of diverse and challenging ideas about architecture and its role in the arts, culture, and society,” has revealed the names of 45 globe-spanning organizations that will split a total of $471,500 in project-based grant funding this year. Over its 65-year history, the Graham Foundation has awarded more than $41 million in direct support to over 4,800 projects by individuals and organizations.
As noted in a statement, the 2021 organization grants “support the work of eminent and emerging architects, artists, designers, critics, curators, scholars, and others, to explore new possibilities for the field and engage practitioners and publics worldwide” and are split between five key project categories: Exhibitions (16 grants), Publications (16 grants), Student-led Publications (6), Public Programs (5), and Film, Video, and New Media (2).
As in years past, there are plenty of familiar names among the awardees (The Architectural League of New York, MAS Context, the Center for Architecture, NOMA) while a slate of recently launched and upcoming exhibitions have received funding including Stephen Burks: Shelter in Place at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, Heather Hart: Afrotecture (Re)Collection at the University at Buffalo Art Galleries, and New Middles, the third exhibition of Exhibit Columbus. The University of Illinois at Chicago College of Architecture, Design, and the Arts is also among the recipients for American Framing, the United States Pavilion at the 17th International Architecture Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia.
All 45 of the Graham Foundation’s 2021 organizational grantees, which include a wide range of institutions and nonprofits based in both the U.S. and abroad, and their respective awarded projects are listed below, while more information on each can be found here.
Exhibitions
Arizona State University Art Museum (Tempe, Arizona)
A Country is not a House | Ronald Rael + Virginia San Fratello
Center for Architecture (New York City)
Reset: Towards a New Commons
The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture (New York City)
Vkhutemas: Laboratory of the Avant-Garde, 1920 1930
The Drawing Center (New York City)
A New Grammar of Ornament
Elmhurst Art Museum (Elmhurst, Illinois)
Houses of Tomorrow
High Museum of Art (Atlanta)
Stephen Burks: Shelter in Place
Institute of Contemporary Arts (London)
Christopher Kulendran Thomas: Another World
Landmark Columbus Foundation (Columbus, Indiana)
New Middles: From Main Street To Megalopolis, What Is The Future Of The Middle City?: 2021 Exhibition, Exhibit Columbus
LAXART (Los Angeles)
Nikita Gale
The Mosaic Rooms (London)
Stateless Heritage
The Museum of Modern Art (New York City)
Modern Architecture in South Asia: The Project of Decolonization (1947 1985)
National Organization of Minority Architects (Washington, D.C.)
SAY IT LOUD The National Organization of Minority Architecture (NOMA) 50th Anniversary Exhibition
Proyector (Mexico City)
Casa Manifiesto
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
Nature X Humanity: Oxman Architects
The University at Buffalo Art Galleries (Buffalo, New York)
Heather Hart: Afrotecture (Re)Collection
University of Illinois at Chicago College of Architecture, Design, and the Arts
American Framing: US Pavilion, 17th International Architecture Exhibition
Film, Video, and New Media Projects
Design Trust Chicago
Chicago Design Database Network
LIGA Space for Architecture (Mexico City)
LIGA—Archivos
Public Programs
Arizona State University Indigenous Design Collaborative (Phoenix)
Indigenous ways of being, knowing, doing, and connecting in architecture, 2021 22 lecture series
Association of Architecture Organizations (Chicago)
2021 Design Matters Conference
Harvard University Graduate School of Design African American Student Union (Cambridge, Massachusetts)
Black Matter: Celebrating Black Spatial Practices from the Magical to the Mundane, Black in Design Conference 2021
MAK Center for Art and Architecture, Los Angeles, at the Schindler House
Schindler House 1922 2022: an anthology of existences
Materials & Applications (Los Angeles)
A Program of Complete Disordering
Publications
Anyone Corporation (New York City)
Log 50, 53, 54, 55
Architectural League of New York (New York City)
NY Cleaning Up?
Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (Washington, D.C.)
JAE Fellows
The Black School (New Orleans)
The Black Schoolhouse Manual
e-flux Architecture (New York City)
Accumulation: The Art, Architecture, and Media of Climate Change
Goldsmiths, University of London Centre for Research Architecture
Research Architecture: Provocations, Practices, and Propositions
Lampo (Chicago)
Lampo Folio
MAS Context (Chicago)
Radical Logic: On the Work of Ensamble Studio
Massachusetts Institute of Technology School of Architecture and Planning (Cambridge, Massachusetts)
Thresholds 50: Before After
New York Review of Architecture (New York City)
The New York Review of Architecture, 2021
Northwest Architectural League (Seattle)
ARCADE, Issue 39.1: Refraction
Places Journal (San Francisco)
Repair Manual
Primary Information (New York City)
Note(s): Dara’s Birnbaum’s Work(ing) Process(es) Re: Concerns (That Take On / Deal With)
Terreform (New York City)
South Side Stories
Urban Design Forum and the Architectural League of New (New York City)
New City Critics
Yale University Press (New Haven, Connecticut)
Gego: Weaving the Space In-Between. Art, Architecture, Design, and Craft at the Edge of Modernity
Student-led Publications
Rice University School of Architecture (Houston)
PLAT 11.0
The School of Architecture (Arcosanti, Arizona)
WASH Magazine
Texas Tech University College of Architecture (Lubbock, Texas)
CROP 09: Shed
University of California, Los Angeles Department of Architecture and Urban Design
POOL, Issue No. 07
University of Illinois at Chicago College of Architecture, Design, and the Arts
Fresh Meat 13: Isolated / Collective
University of Oklahoma Gibbs College of Architecture (Norman, Oklahoma)
Telesis, Volume IV: Habitation and Volume V: Adaptive Practice
