Since 2023, Teiger Foundation has helped curators reduce their environmental impact and enhance climate awareness while executing their Teiger Foundation–funded projects. Climate-focused grantmaking has included Climate action for curators, offered in 2023 and 2024, and now Resilience in contemporary art, a pilot initiated in 2026 with Helen Frankenthaler Foundation.
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Resilience in contemporary art
Co-developed with the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation's Frankenthaler Climate Initiative, the Resilience in contemporary art pilot aims to help leaders of small contemporary art organizations articulate what role climate resilience can play in their work, and begin to put those ideas into action. In response to clearly expressed needs in the field and a worsening climate crisis, the two foundations are working together to support holistic adaptation and resilience planning in tandem with measures to reduce emissions and waste.
The pilot defines resilience as an institution’s ability to adapt and evolve in the face of environmental, social, infrastructural, and operational pressures. Small organizations tend to be closely embedded in their communities, connected to artists, and operationally flexible. They are also often the first places where curators step into roles that combine curatorial vision with institutional leadership. When these organizations invest in and actualize stability across staff culture, internal systems, facilities, and community ties, they function as incubators for new artistic, organizational, and civic models that benefit the field.
As part of the pilot, participants will develop a resilience plan with the help of both topic-driven meetings with their peers and individualized coaching sessions focused on the unique needs of each organization. Each organization receives a participation grant of $50,000. Then, spending priorities that participants identify during the program unlock up to $75,000 for their implementation. Budget items must relate to the long-term resilience or adaptation of the organization to increasing climate impacts in their region, as well as support the mission of the organization.
Please note that you cannot apply directly to Resilience in contemporary art as currently structured. Participants in the pilot were selected from the foundations’ grantee pool through a questionnaire and interview process conducted by staff from both foundations.
2026 Resilience in contemporary art pilot grantees→
Many curators in visual art express a desire to engage with the climate emergency both in what they produce and how they produce it. They also express that lack of capacity and expertise are barriers to doing so. Over the course of 2022, Teiger Foundation developed Climate action for curators to acknowledge and overcome the barriers curators and small organizations face in reducing emissions and waste, by supplementing funding with coaching support. Curators received the services of a sustainability coach who helped them develop a climate plan within their capacity and relevant to their project, organization, and audience. They were then able to access $25,000 to bring the plan to life.
Participants in Climate action for curators included recipients of Three years of programming and Single project grants. In 2025, with the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, the Three years of programming strand was redeveloped into Resilience in contemporary art. Please check back here in Spring 2027 for more on Teiger Foundation’s continued support for Single project grantees.
2023 Climate action pilot grantees →
2024 Climate action grantees →
In 2019 and 2020, the visual art field produced a confluence of grassroots, collaborative thinking and action around climate. Two years of conversation with and financial support for Art into Acres, Artists Commit, Art + Climate Action, Gallery Climate Coalition, and Ki Culture was an integral part of Climate action for curators. Our participating grantees and sustainability coach benefited, and will continue to benefit, enormously from the work of these groups.