The Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, named for the American abstract expressionist painter, announced that it had committed $10 million to the Frankenthaler Climate Initiative to help the nation’s visual arts institutions become more energy efficient.
The organization is partnering with the non-profit clean environmental engineering group RMI, or Rocky Mountain Institute, and the non-profit Environment & Culture Partners to ensure a fount of expertise. Museums of all sizes with a significant visual arts component are encouraged to apply for the next cycle of grant deliberations, which are expected to begin early next year.
The first round of grants, which start at about $7,300 (the Laguna Art Museum in Laguna Beach, Calif.) and include a top award of $100,000, totals $5.1 million and includes 79 institutions in more than 25 states.
The foundation describes the initiative as the largest private national grant-making program to address climate change through cultural institutions. “We wanted to help U.S. art institutions join the climate fray,” Fred Iseman, the president of the foundation, said in a statement. “There is a void to be filled, a crying need to provide technical know-how and financial support to art institutions to scope their needs, define problems and implement solutions.”
Fifteen of the institutions are in New York and are tentpole museums like the Metropolitan Museum of Art ($50,000). Elsewhere, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston ($100,000), and smaller museums like the William A. Farnsworth Library and Art Museum in Rockland, Maine ($29,523), are also recipients. This year’s stipends range from $7,312 to $100,000.
The California Indian Museum and Cultural Center in Santa Rosa is using the funds to create a more resilient power system and cleaner air system that will transform it into a safe haven for at-risk residents during natural disasters like forest fires ($100,000), while the Museo de Arte de Ponce in Puerto Rico will use a $50,000 grant to help it create an earthquake-safe museum. The Guggenheim ($35,000), the Museum of Modern Art ($50,000) and the Davis Art Museum at Wellesley College in Massachusetts ($100,000) are using the grants to help them become carbon neutral.
An additional $4.9 million is set to be awarded over the next two years, with the next grant cycle expected to open in early 2022. A full list of grantees is available at