During the 2023 Eiteljorg Contemporary Art Fellowship show UNSETTLE/Converge, museum guests experienced works by five contemporary artists, including Sheriff’s Star by Natalie Ball (Klamath Tribes [Klamath / Modoc])
Loan from the Gochman Family Collection
Image by Brandon Wright

A longtime friend of the Eiteljorg who has a great passion for contemporary Native art recently made a generous donation that will help secure the museum’s contemporary art efforts.

The anonymous donor’s $1 million gift to the museum in early 2024 became the corpus of a new endowment fund that specifi­cally will support contemporary art at the Eiteljorg on a perpetual basis.

The advantage of creating a new endowment is that investment revenue generated by the principal of the fund will roll off every year — $50,000, at first — as stable and predictable funding for the museum to use to support contemporary art, including the Eiteljorg Contemporary Art Fellowship. The principal remains untouched in the fund, generating investment income to be drawn upon annually in subsequent years. By structuring a gift this way, the donor sees their passion project supported long into the future, thus leaving a legacy.

The museum has a longstanding commitment to contem­porary Native art through its Eiteljorg Contemporary Art Fellowship. Every other year since 1999, the museum has selected a new group of five contemporary Native artists from the U.S. or Canada to be Fellows, including one Invited Artist each round. Through the Fellowship, the museum be­stows an unrestricted cash award to the artists, organizes an exhibition of their art, purchases artwork from each Fellow to add to the museum’s collections, and publishes an exhibition catalog.

Being named an Eiteljorg Contemporary Art Fellow can enhance an artist’s career path in many ways, allowing them to work on larger projects, purchase higher-quality materials, hire assistants, travel for research and more. In the 25 years since the Fellowship’s inception, the Eiteljorg has amassed one of the best collections of contemporary Native art anywhere, and posted online resources on its Fellowship website, contemporaryartfellowship.eiteljorg.org.

The recent endowment gift will help fund the 2027 round of the Fellowship. And the donor isn’t finished; they are planning to add more to the endowment principal in early 2025, which would further boost resources for subsequent rounds of the Fellowship. Proceeds from the fund also could help the museum present contemporary art exhibitions in non-Fellowship years and acquire contemporary art at other times if desired works become available. Building on support from other longtime funders of the Fellowship, this anonymous donor’s gift provides another stable source of funding for contemporary Native art at the museum.

The Eiteljorg staff and Board are deeply grateful for this supporter’s loyalty and long-term vision. Though a $1 million gift is out of reach for most readers, the Development team can work with any Eiteljorg friend to tailor gifts of more modest amounts to support what-ever type of art, programming or other museum priority the supporter is especially passionate about. To learn more, please contact the Eiteljorg at 317.275.1365 or jsimek@eiteljorg.com.

Editor’s note: This article originally appeared in the June 2024 issue of Storyteller magazine.