Elsewhere Museum Awarded 2025–2028 Core Grant from Ruth Foundation for the Arts
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Elsewhere Museum Awarded 2025–2028 Core Grant from Ruth Foundation for the Arts
GREENSBORO, NC — Elsewhere Museum is honored to be named one of 169 organizations nationwide selected to receive a 2025–2028 Core Grant from the Ruth Foundation for the Arts. The multi-year award from the Ruth Foundation for the Arts will provide Elsewhere with $150,000 in unrestricted support over three years, helping sustain the museum’s experimental living collection, artist residency programs, and community-centered projects in downtown Greensboro.
The Ruth Foundation for the Arts recently announced it is awarding $25.35 million in unrestricted funds over three years through its expanded Core Grant program, nearly doubling its annual grantmaking and shifting to a multi-year model that offers organizations greater stability and room for long-term planning. Core Grants are awarded to arts and cultural organizations across the United States that have previously been recognized through the Foundation’s Artist Choice program.
“Recieving a Ruth Arts grant is a profound recognition by artists of Elsewhere’s impact over two decades. Elsewhere has hosted more than 1000 resident artists and 120 residency session, and fostered the work of artists recognized nationally and internationally. Elsewhere begins with a humble premise, that environment matters to creativity, and from that idea, and the massive collection of 20th century surplus amassed by my Grandmother Sylvia, Elsewhere and its artists have created a world like none other. During the pandemic the organization hit a bump, but with the encouragement of our community we have returned to our core principles and we are relaunching our residency!” said George Scheer, Co-Founder at Elsewhere Museum. “Ruth Arts Core Grant is a powerful affirmation that artists still need, and deeply value spaces like Elsewhere, where they can be challenged, take risks, and discover new ways of making. This support is a tremendous vote of confidence that Elsewhere’s mission of collaborative futures, rooted in experimentation, reuse, and collective imagination, remains vital for artists and communities in Greensboro and across the Southeast.” said Jesse Hoyle, who is heading up Elsewhere’s renewal.
Founded in 2003, Elsewhere Museum is a living museum and artist residency set within a former thrift store in downtown Greensboro. Working with a three-story collection of surplus and vintage objects, Elsewhere invites artists, neighbors, and collaborators to transform the site through site-specific artworks, performances, and public programs. The organization’s guiding principle—“nothing new enters, nothing leaves”—cultivates a unique, ever-evolving environment where experimentation, reuse, and collective imagination shape the space.
Through the Ruth Foundation Core Grant, and its unrestricted nature, Elsewhere will work to:
Expand and sustain artist residencies and fellowships;
Deepen partnerships with local and regional communities;
Care for the museum’s collection and building; and
Invest in the staff, systems, and time needed for thoughtful, long-term planning.
“As a national program, Core provides a snapshot of the current cultural landscape, highlighting the strategic, imaginative, and critical ways organizations are approaching their work today,” said the Ruth Foundation for the Arts in its announcement of the 2025–2028 Core Grant recipients. As one of this year’s grantees, Elsewhere joins a cohort of organizations ranging from emergent initiatives to longstanding institutions across the country. Funds will be applied toward general operations, including expanded support for our residency program.
Elsewhere’s recognition by the Ruth Foundation for the Arts affirms the museum’s role as a hub for experimental art and community collaboration in Greensboro and across the Southeast. Through residencies, exhibitions, performances, workshops, and public programs, Elsewhere continues to support artists and neighbors in imagining new possibilities for living, learning, and making together.
ABOUT ELSEWHERE MUSEUM
Elsewhere Museum is a living museum and artist residency in a former thrift store on Elm Street in downtown Greensboro, North Carolina. Home to a vast collection of surplus and vintage objects, Elsewhere invites artists and communities to collaboratively reimagine the space through site-specific projects, performances, and public programs. Through its residencies, exhibitions, and community partnerships, Elsewhere fosters experimentation, reuse, and collective storytelling. For more information, visit elsewheremuseum.org or email museum@goelsewhere.org.
ABOUT THE RUTH FOUNDATION FOR THE ARTS
With an inventive approach to philanthropy and artistic support rooted in creativity, care, and experimentation, the Ruth Foundation for the Arts (Ruth Arts) launched in 2022 to support organizations in the visual and performing arts. Leading with its flagship Artist Choice program that is guided by an artist-driven nomination process, the foundation continues to honor the legacy of its founder Ruth DeYoung Kohler II (1941–2020) with ten distinct grant programs. Thanks to Ruth’s vision and generosity, Ruth Arts has been able to award over $55 million in grants to date. In 2024, Ruth Arts opened an art space in Milwaukee as an extension of its grantmaking. This year, Ruth Arts collaborates with Rivers Institute for Contemporary Art & Thought—an inaugural 2022 Artist Choice awardee—to present an extensive viewing of works by Bettina Grossman (1927–2021) while actively engaging with and revealing more of the artist’s archive.
