Vija Celmins Foundation Grant
The Latvian National Museum of Art, in collaboration with Latvian-born American artist Vija Celmins, established the Vija Celmins Foundation Grant in March 2025 to support the creative pursuits and work of Latvian artists.
Grant
The Vija Celmins Foundation Inc., established in the United States to promote culture, in collaboration with the Latvian National Museum of Art (LNMA) and Latvian-born American artist Vija Celmins, will award an annual grant of 30,000 USD to one Latvian artist who works in the field of visual arts, starting from 2025. The Vija Celmins Foundation has pledged to fund the grant for ten years – from October 2025 until October 2034.
The aim of the grant is to support actively practicing Latvian artists or individual members of an artist group who have demonstrated high artistic merit in their creative careers. Vija Celmins has always taken an interest in the Latvian art scene and the fate of Latvian artists, how they, despite often limited opportunities, manage to practice art and maintain creative freedom. Vija Celmins wishes to promote art patronage in Latvia, believing that it is the duty of every wealthy individual to donate to a socially significant cause.
Folow your art and go where it takes you. To make art is to pursue what you cannot say,
Vija Celmins inspires the applicants.
About Vija Celmins
Vija Celmins is a Latvian-born American artist. Celmins was born in 1938 in Riga, in 1944 together with her family she left the country as a refugee, in 1948 she arrived in the USA and in 1949 settled in Indianapolis. In 1962, when Vija Celmins began her studies at the University of California (Master of Fine Arts, 1965), she moved to Los Angeles where she lived and worked until 1981. Subsequently she moved to New York, forcefully establishing her name in the Western art circuit, becoming one of the most notable contemporary artists. Her drawings, paintings and prints are known for their depiction of the ocean surface, the starry sky, spider webs, and desert rocks.
Vija Celmins’ works are kept in the great collections of contemporary art in the world: Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), Whitney Museum of American Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Centre Pompidou in Paris, Tate Gallery in London, and others. 11 works by the author are held in the collection of the Latvian National Museum of Art.
Grant logo
The Vija Celmins Foundation Grant logo with Saturn was designed by artist Sarmīte Māliņa, inspiring by a work in the LNMA collection – Vija Celmins’ lithograph Saturn Stamps (1995). In the late 1960s, the era of space conquest drew Celmins’ interest to the images shot in space. She has depicted Saturn in several works and Saturn Stamps were conceived as a conceptual commentary on the emergence of the subject of space in popular culture.
Grant supporters
The grant is supported by SIA ZAB Ellex Kļaviņš. The law firm’s co-operation with the Latvian National Museum of Art began in 2017, and since then art patronage has become an essential part of the firm’s cultural identity.
