MoMA PS1 Curatorial Team. From left: Ruba Katrib, Elena Ketelsen González, Jody Graf, Sheldon Gooch, Kari Rittenbach.
Photo: Marissa Alper
Dec. 18, 2024 By Shane O’Brien
MoMA PS1 has received a $1 million gift for new exhibitions from the Teiger Foundation, which supports curators of contemporary visual art.
The gift will allow the museum, located at 22-25 Jackson Ave., to create a Teiger Foundation Exhibition Fund and directly support the MoMA PS1 curatorial team by providing funding for their exhibitions.
The fund will support upcoming exhibitions by artists Julien Ceccaldi, Whitney Claflin, and Sandra Poulson. The gift also celebrates the legacy of former MoMA PS1 board member and foundation founder David Teiger on the tenth anniversary of his death.
Ruba Katrib, chief curator and director of curatorial affairs at MoMA PS1, said the museum was thrilled to receive the gift and that the fund can help it develop long-term ideas.
“Exhibition funds support long-term planning, allowing curators to develop ideas over time,” Katrib said in a statement. “Work with artists can start earlier and be more collaborative, facilitating experimentation over many months or years.”
Connie Butler, the Agnes Gund Director at MoMA PS1, said the fund will help the museum’s curatorial team realize some of its more ambitious long-term goals.
“Throughout its history, MoMA PS1 has been an incubator for curators working on all platforms,
offering an integrated curatorial approach that spans our galleries, the stage and the city,” Butler said in a statement. “I am so grateful that David’s generosity, through the legacy of the Foundation, will help make the ambitious visions of our curatorial team possible and have a strong impact on the artists in our community.”
Larissa Harris, executive director of the Teiger Foundation, said MoMA PS1 allowed David Teiger to grow from an art collector into a patron of emerging artists. Harris said the museum was a springboard that allowed Teiger to become involved in the process of exhibition-making.
“On this tenth anniversary of David Teiger’s death, it’s a perfect time to remember the foundational role PS1 played in his commitment to contemporary art and artists,” Harris said.
Meanwhile, Alanna Heiss, director of MoMA PS1 from 1976 until 2010 and the museum’s founder said she believed Teiger would be proud to see his legacy live on at the museum.
“On this 10th anniversary of his death, I believe he would be happy to know that, with the support of Teiger Foundation, curatorial teams at PS1 will continue to creatively instigate the controlled madness we call making exhibitions,” Heiss said.
The Teiger Foundation is a private foundation devoted to supporting contemporary art curators
through an open call for proposals and other funding initiatives. The foundation will support exhibitions at MoMA PS1 by New York artists Whitney Claflin and Julien Ceccaldi, which both run in 2025 from March 27 until Aug. 25. A separate exhibition by interdisciplinary artist Sandra Poulson will run at the museum from April 24 until Oct. 6.
