The Art Dealers Association of America Foundation announced today the four recipients of its 2018 grants: the Knoxville Museum of Art in Tennessee, the Museum of Contemporary Photography at Columbia College in Chicago, the Washington County Museum of Fine Arts in Maryland, and the Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian in New Mexico. They will each receive between $10,000 and $15,000 to mount exhibitions and conduct research.

Selected by the foundation’s board, comprising ADAA galleries, the four new grantees presented proposals for exhibitions touching on issues such as global migration, cultural identity, and race that feature work by underrepresented artists. With the funds, the Washington County Museum of Fine Arts will present a show on Joshua Johnson, a freed slave considered to be the first professional African American artist. The program was open to art museums with annual operating budgets under $5 million dollars.

“Through the donations of ADAA member galleries, the ADAA Foundation grant program is representative of the galleries; commitment to the arts community at large,” Dorsey Waxter, president of the ADAA Foundation, said in a statement. “We were very impressed with the range and quality of the applications we received for 2018, and particularly the ways that museums are seeking to explore artists and themes that are both historically and culturally resonant for their audiences. Each of the selected exhibitions successfully broadens the art historical canon in some way.”