Studio Museum Harlem Receives $10M Endowment From Ford Foundation To Permanently Fund Director And Chief Curator Role

The Ford Foundation issues $10 million grant to The Studio Museum in Harlem.

The Ford Foundation has awarded the Studio Museum in Harlem a $10 million endowment to fund and name the position of director and chief curator for the foreseeable future.

Darren Walker, president of the Ford Foundation, announced the grant on Tuesday at the museum’s annual Gala, which was attended by Trustees, philanthropists, artists, business and community leaders, and heads of cultural institutions. In recognition of the endowment grant, the position will now be titled The Ford Foundation Director and Chief Curator.

The grant announcement coincides with Thelma Golden’s upcoming 20th anniversary as director and chief curator of the Studio Museum and the anticipated opening of the museum’s new home in the fall of 2025.

“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,” Walker said. “The Ford Foundation is proud to support one of America’s Cultural Treasures’ work to serve artists and the public at large.”

“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,” he added.

The Studio Museum in Harlem is internationally renowned for its pivotal role in advancing the work of artists of African descent. The museum is currently building a new home at its longtime location on Manhattan’s West 125th Street with several goals in mind: to better serve a growing and diverse audience, provide expanded educational opportunities for all ages, broaden its renowned exhibition program, enhance the display of its unique collection, and strengthen its pioneering Artist-in-Residence program.

“The Ford Foundation’s support has time and time again been integral to the Studio Museum’s many successes and evolutions,” Golden said.

“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 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.”