The Larca enjoys a close partnership with the Terra Foundation. 
Based in Chicago, the Foundation is dedicated to the study and promotion of American art. It supports exhibitions, study programs, and international exchange programs for academics and curators.
For more information about the Terra Foundation for American Art.
At the Terra Foundation Paris Center, students and academics have access to Europe’s only research library devoted exclusively to American art. The Paris Center is the hub of the Foundation’s European activities, fostering a rich dialogue on the visual arts of the United States through academic programs, institutional partnerships, exhibition and publication programs.
For more information about the Terra Foundation Paris Center.
Terra Foundation grants and partnerships accessible to Larca members
Post-Doctoral Research and Teaching Fellowship in Paris
A Post-Doctoral specialist in American art spends two years in Paris and teaches Visual Culture seminars open to students from the Masters programs at Université Paris Cité and Paris-Nanterre.
Summary :
Endowed by a generous grant of the Terra Foundation, this two-year research and teaching fellowship in Paris offers a postdoctoral scholar the opportunity to pursue their own work, and teach at Université Paris Cité and Université de Paris-Nanterre. The fellow will receive a $ 42,000 annual stipend (to cover all costs including travel, housing, visa, health insurance, research, and so on; to be disbursed in euros).
In addition, the program also includes a $ 2,000 annual fund towards the organization of scientific events.
Each fall in the 24-months period (2022–24) the Fellowship recipient will teach (in English) a seminar in American art history and visual culture to graduate students specializing in art history (Paris Nanterre) and American visual and cultural studies (Université de Paris).
S/he will conduct personal research in conjunction with the Art History and Visual Culture research teams of the two partner universities.
Martyna Majewska, the new Terra Foundation Research and Teaching Fellow for 2022-2024
Congratulations and a warm welcome to Martyna Majewska, the newly appointed Terra Foundation Research and Teaching Fellow for 2022-2024. She will be teaching a seminar open to Masters students from Paris-Cité University and from Paris-Nanterre University, titled: Against History: Critiques of documents, archives and monuments in US art since the 1960s.
‘I recently received my PhD from the School of Art History at the University of St Andrews in Scotland, where I also taught at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels. My thesis, ‘Resisting Overdetermination, Destabilising Representation: African American Artists Performing for the Camera since the 1970s,’ examined a selection of practices in which artists mobilise embodied performances to produce specific, carefully designed and incisive images. My project demonstrated that this mode of image production has been exceptionally successful in challenging hegemonic representations of people of colour, exposing the racist and heteropatriarchal stereotypes inscribed in these representations. I look forward to developing further my thinking about photography, performance and the construction of race with colleagues and students at LARCA.’
Seminar : Against History: Critiques of documents, archives and monuments in US art since the 1960s.
At least since the 1960s, US-based artists have mobilised a variety of media – conceptual photography and photomontage, performance, video and installation – in order to disrupt the dominant visual schemas that shape popular perceptions of American history. While many conceptual artists treated photography merely as a recording mechanism, this course examines practices in which photography and video have been deployed to challenge the assumed transparency and facticity of camera-based technologies. Equally, contemplating a selection of contemporary artistic practices in diverse and in mixed media, this course problematises the common presumptions that monuments are reflections of history, and that archives and museums tell a nation’s story.
Students will examine photographic series by Lee Friedlander, performances for the camera by David Hammons and by Carrie Mae Weems, the various multimedia projects that have inspired the term ‘institutional critique,’ as well as recent exhibitions which have sought to interrogate and subvert the established modes of transmitting and categorising knowledge – modes whose accuracy and authority are often left unquestioned. Throughout this course, we shall debate whether the alternative, critical approaches to documents, monuments and museums can propel the efforts to decolonise art history.
