VIA Art Fund has announced its 2020 grant recipients, among whom the nonprofit will distribute $1.5 million, the largest disbursement it has made to date. The funds will be awarded to artists, collectives, and institutions across four categories: Artistic Production Grant Fund, VIA | Wagner Incubator Grant Fund, 2020 VIA Grantee Relief Fund, and the VIA Curatorial Fellowship.

Among the projects assisted by the artistic production grants, which total $925,000 and are issued in support of the production, exhibition, and accessioning of new works of art., are Charles Gaines’s monumental public sculptures Moving Chains and Mound; Tiona Nekkia McClodden’s Play Me Home, a three-channel film and video work accompanied by a series of related sculptural objects; Richard Mosse’s multichannel, immersive film and video installation that takes the climate crisis as its subject; Tuan Andrew Nguyen’s film and live performance installation Crimes de Solidarité; a large-scale sculptural tapestry by Ebony G. Patterson; Jacolby Satterwhite’s video game Dawn; and performance work by Rose Simpson. VIA, whose name stands for Visionary Initiatives in Art, additionally gifted Lynn Hershman Leeson’s 2019 interactive installation Shadow Stalker to the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.

Receiving incubator grants of $40,000 apiece reserved for geographically diverse visual arts nonprofit organizations are Artspace, an alternative art space and residency in New Haven; Disjecta, a Portland, Oregon, alternative art space; San Francisco alternative art space the Lab; Miami’s Locust Projects, an alternative art space and artist residency; and The Luminary, a St. Louis–based alternative art space and publishing platform.

Emergency relief funds meant to aid small, independent arts organizations and nonprofits during the early months of the Covid-19 pandemic were distributed among twenty-four previous Incubator grantees, with each receiving $14,250 in unrestricted general operating support.

Finally, Wassan Al-Khudhairi, chief curator of the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, was named the recipient of the 2021 VIA Curatorial Fellowship, which is to fund research and travel related to her work.

“Our grantees exemplify VIA’s rigorous standards for artistic production, thought leadership, and public engagement. Their ambitious projects—so many of which were paused, retooled, or freshly reconceived during the course of 2020—are now poised to debut with renewed relevance in a changed world. We watch with great anticipation as they chart the course forward, staking out new ground on which we can all convene together in a brighter and more promising near future,” said the fund’s president, Bridgitt Evans, in a statement.

A complete list of recipients is below.

Artistic Production

Anchorage Museum, for the production and acquisition of Nicholas Galanin and Merritt Johnson’s Natural Forces

Carolina Caycedo & David de Rozas, for the production and public accessioning of The Blessings of the Mystery

Creative Time, for the production and exhibition of Charles Gaines’s Moving Chains and Mound

Josh Kline, for the production and public accessioning of Adaptation

Liverpool Biennial, for the production and exhibition of a new sculptural installation by Ebony G. Patterson

Richard Mosse, for the production and public accessioning of Vector (working title)

Tuan Andrew Nguyen, for the production and public accessioning of Crime(s) of Solidarity / Crimes de Solidarité

Prospect New Orleans, for the production and public accessioning of Tiona Nekkia McClodden’s Play Me Home

Jacolby Satterwhite, for the production and public accessioning of Dawn

Rose B. Simpson, for the production and exhibition of a new performance work for the Nevada Museum of Art

Socrates Sculpture Park, for performances activating Jeffrey Gibson’s VIA- supported sculpture Because Once You Enter My House, It Becomes Our House

VIA Artworks Gifted and Accessioned into Public Collections

Shadow Stalker, Lynn Hershman Leeson, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco

VIA | Wagner Incubator Grant Fund

Artspace, New Haven

Disjecta Contemporary Art Center, Portland, OR

The Lab, San Francisco

Locust Projects, Miami

The Luminary, St. Louis

2020 VIA Grantee Relief Fund

Antenna, New Orleans

ART21, New York

Artpace, San Antonio

Artist’s Institute, New York

Artists Space, New York

Burnaway, Atlanta*

CCA Wattis, San Francisco

Coleman Center for the Arts, York, AL*

International Studio & Curatorial Program (ISCP), Brooklyn, NY

Independent Curators International, New York

LAXART, Los Angeles

Midway Contemporary Art, Minneapolis*

Primary Information, New York

PS1-Center for Afrofuturist Studies, Iowa City, IA*

Recess, Brooklyn, NY

Rhizome, New York

SculptureCenter, Queens, NY

SPACE, Portland, ME*

Swiss Institute, New York

The Kitchen, New York

The Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago, Chicago

The Underground Museum, Los Angeles

Triple Canopy, New York

X-TRA, Los Angeles

* VIA | Wagner 2019 Incubator Grant Fund Grantee

2020 VIA Curatorial Fellow

Wassan Al-Khudhairi, chief curator, Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis