Mission
The FLAG Art Foundation is a non-collecting, nonprofit exhibition space that mounts solo, two-person, and thematic group exhibitions centering on emerging and established artists from around the globe. Organized by a diverse community of curators and thinkers within and beyond the art world, FLAG opened to the public in 2008 and has staged over 100 exhibitions celebrating the work of nearly 1,000 artists. Committed to providing education and resources for its surrounding community, and across New York City, all exhibitions and programs—including artist talks, artist-led workshops, and guided tours for school and museum groups—are free and open to the public.
FLAG provides various projects, prizes, and initiatives that offer dynamic support to contemporary artists. Its recurring Spotlight series features a new or never-before-exhibited artwork accompanied by a commissioned piece of writing, encouraging focused and thoughtful dialogues between the visual arts and critics, scholars, poets, and beyond. The Suzanne Deal Booth/FLAG Art Foundation Prize comprises a $200,000 unrestricted award to an artist along with two solo exhibitions—originating at The Contemporary Austin, Austin, TX, and traveling to FLAG—an accompanying publication, and related public programming. Over the years, FLAG has collaborated with local, national, and international organizations including Art & Newport, Newport, RI, The Harlem Children’s Zone, New York, NY, The Lab and Museum School, New York, NY, New Curators, London, UK, and New York Road Runners, New York, NY, to reach an audience of all ages and backgrounds.
The FLAG Art Foundation was founded by Glenn Fuhrman, an art patron, philanthropist, and Co-Founder of The Fuhrman Family Foundation. Fuhrman is a Trustee of New York-Presbyterian Hospital, New York, NY, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY, and The Tate Americas Foundation, New York, NY, and is a Board Member of The Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia, Philadelphia, PA. He is also a Board Member of the 92nd Street Y, New York, and The Central Park Conservancy, New York, NY. He and his wife Amanda live in New York City with their three children.
FLAG also facilitates loans of contemporary artworks from the Fuhrman Family Foundation to museums and galleries. Please click here to view a list of institutional art loan recipients or request access to the collection.
Founder’s Statement
The FLAG Art Foundation emanated from my passion for collecting contemporary art and the desire to share that joy and personal fulfillment with the public at large. For more than 25 years, I have cultivated an in-depth approach to collecting art of my lifetime, which has allowed me to forge strong and sustained relationships with artists throughout the evolution of their careers. Additionally, my wife Amanda and I have developed unique relationships with artists, curators, gallerists, museum directors, and other collectors, all of whom tremendously enrich our lives. It was my hope in creating FLAG that we could work with these creative and inspiring individuals in new capacities and build a program that would honor artists and engage viewers.
FLAG’s inaugural exhibition in 2008 was Attention to Detail, curated by Chuck Close, which featured fifty artists whose practices focused on a high degree of conceptual and technical precision. Our approach to organizing that show was to be ambitious, inclusive, and artist-focused, and we have carried those tenets forward in all facets of the Foundation. Over the past decade, FLAG has worked with professional curators and museum directors as well as less-experienced curators, ranging from artists to athletes to fashion designers. We strive to make our shows accessible to anyone with an interest in contemporary art.
Since its inception, FLAG has presented nearly seventy solo, two-person, and thematic group exhibitions featuring more than 700 artists. We expanded our program to work with individual artists such as Kamrooz Aram, Ashley Bickerton, Cynthia Daignault, Genevieve Gaignard, Peter Uka, and others, to develop solo exhibitions of new work, or present a body of work for the first time in New York. Many artists have been included in multiple exhibitions, and some have been invited to explore ideas relevant to their practices through curatorial projects, including Awol Erizku, Ewan Gibbs, Hilary Harkness, Jim Hodges, Nicolas Party, and others.
We are excited to continue FLAG’s programming into a second decade working with new artists, new curators and new ideas while we of course continue working with old friends along the way.
—Glenn Fuhrman