Description

The Luce Foundation’s Religion and Theology Program seeks to deepen understanding of religion as a source of division and a site of common ground, an agent of inequality and a force for social transformation. Our work strengthens knowledge of religion’s complex and contested place in public life; diversifies intellectual inquiry in this area; and promotes more curious and civil public conversations. We build initiatives that creatively engage religion in pursuit of a more just and compassionate future.
As we seek to grow and strengthen the creative efforts of diverse knowledge makers, the program has deliberately sought to return in fresh ways to support for work at the intersections of religion, the arts, and cultural institutions. The program has a long history of grant support for projects and initiatives focused on religion and the arts, though that support has been somewhat more sporadic until recently.
Over the last several years, new grants have supported projects focused on religion, material culture, and the arts, including, for example, larger grants to support projects at Yale University, Saint Louis University, and Ohio State University.
In addition, an extended series of smaller, special grants have supported: a project on votive giving (Bard Graduate Center); a series of workshops on Shaker arts and culture (Fordham University, in collaboration with the Shaker Museum | Mount Lebanon); a working group on spirituality, the arts, and social justice (Rothko Chapel); a collaborative digital project to document the religious dimensions of the January 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol Building (Smithsonian NMAH); the collection and curation of artifacts and “offerings” brought to George Floyd Square in Minneapolis (George Floyd Global Memorial); the collaborative work of artists and scholars to explore the intersections of art, faith, and spirit (Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center); and, most recently, a project on “Visual and Sonic Landscapes of Muslim LA” (which involves collaboration between the Fowler Museum and the Islamic Studies Program, Department of New Eastern Languages and Cultures at UCLA).
Numerous other projects supported by grants from the program in recent years have also included substantial engagement with cultural institutions, artists, and artistic communities, including a new large grant to the Center for Religion and Cities at Morgan State University.
The grant being recommended here, to support a planned exhibition at the Museum of the City of New York (MCNY), continues this line of grantmaking, with a particular focus on religious diversity, xenophobia, and faith-rooted activism in New York City. Devised by MCNY’s current Andrew W. Mellon Post-Doctoral Curatorial Fellow, Dr. Azra Dawood, “City of Faith: Religion, Activism, and Urban Space” aims to go beyond common conceptions of New York as a predominantly secular urban setting to explore “the complex and often surprising relationships that connect religion to public space.” Supplemented by funding from the Mellon Foundation and other partners, the Luce Foundation’s grant will provide support for the exhibition and a related set of anticipated public programs.