Thoma Foundation Special Project Funding Grant

Thoma Foundation Special Project Funding Grant

Status: ACTIVE
Funder: Carl And Marilynn Thoma Foundation
Last Updated: January 15, 2026

Summary

The Carl and Marilynn Thoma Foundation offers Special Project Funding to support innovative initiatives in the arts, particularly in under-resourced areas. This grant encourages collaborative projects that enhance community engagement and education, focusing on art exhibitions and scholarships in the greater Texas Panhandle. By fostering leadership and creativity, the Foundation aims to empower individuals and organizations to make a lasting impact in the fields of art and art history.

Overview

Inspired to make contributions with a wide-ranging yet personal impact, Carl and Marilynn Thoma founded the Carl & Marilynn Thoma Art Foundation in 2014 to distinguish their initiatives in and support of the visual arts. In 2021, the Foundation was renamed the Carl & Marilynn Thoma Foundation to more broadly reflect its expanded philanthropic efforts and initiatives, including the Thoma Scholars Program, which aims to strengthen community, leadership, and education initiatives in under-resourced and rural areas. The Carl & Marilynn Thoma Foundation recognizes that the arts and education enhance lives and communities. We make art collection-related grants, as well as lending and exhibiting our own collection. We focus our education funding on the rural Southwest, primarily offering scholarships to students in the greater Texas panhandle. Through these giving programs, we strive to foster leadership, innovation, and equal opportunity. Nonprofit Organizations The Carl & Marilynn Thoma Foundation provides grants to nonprofit organizations whose innovative projects and original ideas will advance scholarship in our collection areas. We accept Letters of Inquiry on a rolling basis for bold proposals that provide promising insights into the fields of art which we collect: Art of the Spanish Americas The Foundation’s Art of the Spanish Americas collection numbers more than 200 works from the 17th to 19th centuries—principally paintings from South America. The collection includes works on religious themes and portraits from the Viceroyalty of Peru (and the smaller entities such as the Kingdom of Nueva Granada into which it was divided in the eighteenth century), as well as a small selection of portraits from the Spanish Caribbean. Digital & Media Art The Carl & Marilynn Thoma Foundation began supporting the field of Digital Art in 2009. Our collection has grown to include over 400 artworks by more than 138 artists, representing a global history of the medium from 1959 to the present. The Thoma Foundation’s core collection of Digital Art highlights the specific achievements of modern computers—their processing speed, infinite data capacity, imaging precision, and virtual networking—to aid artists. Media Art signifies our support of art created with both pioneering and emerging time-based technologies, especially in relation to electronic mass media—the news and photojournalism, film and television, video games, social media, and other cultural experiences produced by communications technology. Japanese Bamboo The Japanese Bamboo collection includes contemporary Japanese Bamboo baskets representing both independent artists and bamboo artists from the two professional associations devoted to the field, Nitten (Japan Fine Arts Exhibition) and the Nihon Kogeikai (Japan Craft Arts Association). Post-War Painting & Sculpture The Foundation’s collection of mid-century global abstract art is centered around the years 1950–79 and the major movements of that period including Color Field, Hard Edge, Op, Washington Color School, Light & Space, and shaped canvas. We also welcome requests pertaining to the arts and culture of the American Southwest. The projects we support through our Collections-Related Grants for Nonprofits fall within one or more of the following categories: Exhibitions We welcome the opportunity to become an early funder of landmark exhibitions that relate to our collections, and which significantly raise the public profile of those genres while also advancing art historical scholarship. Historically, we have cultivated strong relationships with medium-size museums across the country that reach a diverse regional audience and value innovative curation. Exhibition funding can include development, scholarship, construction, outreach, traveling costs, admissions subsidies, and more. The Thoma Foundation also loans pieces from its collections in support of exhibitions. Convenings To encourage scholarly debate and dialogue, we fund academic conferences and workshops that will significantly advance the fields of art scholarship related to our collections. We urge applicants to familiarize themselves with industry standards for honoraria and per diems in advance of creating a convening budget. Academic Research, travel, manuscript development, hiring research assistants, equipment, etc. to support original scholarship related to our collection areas. Academic projects should culminate in a clear final deliverable such as a book manuscript or peer-reviewed article. Individual Fellowships and Awards In addition to our nonprofit grants, the Foundation runs several fellowship programs for individuals related to our Art of the Spanish Americas collections. This includes two annual fellowship programs geared towards postdoctoral scholars and Ph.D. candidates: the Marilynn Thoma Fellowship in Art of the Spanish Americas and the Thoma Foundation Research and Travel Awards in Art of the Spanish Americas. Biannually, we offer the Exploratory Travel Award to early career Ph.D. students. Thoma Foundation Special Project Funding The Carl & Marilynn Thoma Foundation offers a Special Project Funding Grant as part of its broader grant programs described above. Through the above programs, we seek to heighten public interest and awareness, fuel innovative scholarship, and promote dynamic partnerships in the fields of art and art history. For the Special Project Funding, the Foundation takes a proactive and personal approach to giving. Rather than making grants based on a call for applications, we work collaboratively to make challenging projects happen. We support people and their bright futures instead of endowments or capital improvements. Our interests here include: Significant art exhibitions and programs supporting artists and the areas of our collection.Innovative high school projects and college scholarships that build leaders and communities in the greater Texas Panhandle. If you have a project you would like to partner with us on, we are interested. We value long-term relationships with grantees and encourage you to connect with us at any stage of the application process.

Eligibility

You can learn more about this opportunity by visiting the funder's website. We accept applications during three yearly grant cycles for bold proposals that align with our collections areas and artists. Individuals, 501(c)(3) organizations, fiscally sponsored organizations, and university departments are welcome to apply. Although we fund projects from across the United States, we are particularly interested in receiving proposals from our target regions. In the U.S., this includes Arizona, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Texas, with particular emphasis on rural and nonmetro institutions and organizations from within those states. For projects related to our Art of the Spanish Americas collection, we also occasionally fund international projects.