2022 grant recipients

VIA Art Fund is pleased to announce its 2022 grant recipients across three categories: Artistic Production Grant Fund, VIA | Wagner Incubator Grant Fund, and the VIA Curatorial Fellowship.

Brooke Davis Anderson, Executive Director of VIA Art Fund commented, “In 2022 VIA Art Fund once again contributed $1 million to strengthen our shared cultural landscape. Traveling to a range of geographic locations and spreading our support across the country and abroad, we recognized eminent artists who have been active for decades and creators new to us. This past year I was consistently struck by exciting non-traditional aspects of our grantees; for example, we awarded projects in a wax figure collection, atop urban rooftops, on an industrial pier, and in historic homes. These places were selected by artists and curators to do a few things: raise awareness about lesser-known sites overlooked by the art world, attract new audiences to contemporary art, and encourage artists to work outside of an expected cultural map. These sites also indicate interest on the part of our grantees to tackle persistent inequalities around access to contemporary art, especially within communities of color and places of class diversity.”

Over the course of 2022, VIA Art Fund approved 780,000 USD in Artistic Production grants and gifted three VIA-produced artworks to US-based museum collections: Tiona Nekkia McClodden’s Play Me Home to the Baltimore Museum of Art, Amie Siegel’s Asterisms to the Art Institute of Chicago, and Richard Mosse’s Broken Spectre to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in California.

In partnership with Wagner Foundation, VIA awarded 200,000 USD in VIA | Wagner Incubator Grant Fund grants. Five geographically diverse visual arts nonprofit organizations received 40,000 USD each for general operating support over two years.

Osei Bonsu has been selected as VIA’s 2023 Curatorial Fellow, which carries an award of 25,000 USD to support curatorial research and travel. Osei Bonsu is currently the Curator of International Art at Tate Modern in London, where he is responsible for organizing exhibitions, developing the museum’s collection, and broadening the representation of artists from Africa and the African diaspora.

In January of 2023, Susan Thompson joins VIA Art Fund as Director of Grantmaking & Curatorial Research. Prior to joining VIA, she served from 2020-2022 as project manager for Simone Leigh: Sovereignty, the artist’s exhibition for the U.S. Pavilion as part of the 59th Venice Biennale. From 2009-2020, Thompson worked as a curator at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, where she curated numerous exhibitions and worked on diversifying the acquisitions that entered the permanent collection. Thompson remarked, “I am delighted to be joining the dynamic team at VIA Art Fund, an organization I have long admired for its innovative philanthropic model and commitment to providing direct, meaningful support to artists, curators, and arts non-profits.“

Looking ahead to 2023, Anderson commented, “In 2023 VIA Art Fund will celebrate 10 years and a decade of supporting contemporary artists, curators, museums, and organizations with more than $7,000,000 in grantmaking and service. Our VIA Partners have left an indelible mark in studios and exhibition halls around the world. It is exciting to imagine what our Partners will offer in the next decade.”

VIA Art Fund 2022 grantees

Artistic Production Grant Fund
Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art: production and exhibition: Imani Jacqueline Brown’s What remains at the ends of the earth?
CCA, Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts: production and exhibition: Em’kal
Eyongakpa’s sǒ bàtú reflections (bath for the ears) 
Counterpublic Triennial: production and accessioning: David Adjaye’s Asaase III
Counterpublic Triennial: production and exhibition: Torkwase Dyson’s Bird and Lava (Scott Joplin)
Henry Art Gallery: production and exhibition: rafa esparza’s Temple of Boom
MassMOCA: production and exhibition: EJ Hill’s Brake Run Helix
Philadelphia Contemporary: production and exhibition: Jean Shin’s Fresh Water
Pioneer Works: production and exhibition: Charles Atlas’ The Mathematics of Consciousness
Project EATS: production and exhibition: Garrett Bradley and Arthur Jafa’s A Negro, A Lim-o
Wu Tsang, production and accessioning: Of Whales for the 59th Venice Biennale Arte: The Milk of Dreams, Gaggiandre

VIA Artworks Gifted and Accessioned
Play Me Home by Tiona Nekkia McClodden, Baltimore Museum of Art
Asterisms by Amie Siegel, Art Institute of Chicago
Broken Spectre by Richard Mosse, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

VIA | Wagner Incubator Grant Fund
Boston Art Review, Boston, Massachusetts
Granary Arts, Ephraim, Utah
Project for Empty Space, Newark, New Jersey
Racing Magpie, Rapid City, South Dakota
Utah Museum of Contemporary Art, Salt Lake City, Utah

2023 VIA Curatorial Fellow
Osei Bonsu, Curator of International Art, Tate Modern, London

About VIA Art Fund
VIA Art Fund is a 501(c)(3) founded by an international coalition of individuals and private foundations who believe in the central role art plays in society.  VIA’s activities support innovative, ambitious, and rigorous works of art and endeavors with far-reaching public impact realized in various forms including institutional production and acquisition, exhibitions, public installations, curatorial research, publications, and symposia. Funding artists, curators and arts organizations around the world, VIA Art Fund awards grants in three categories – Artistic Production Grants, Incubator Grants, and an annual Curatorial Fellowship grant – that exemplify VIA’s core values of Artistic Production, Thought Leadership, and Public Engagement. 

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