Grants to Artists are administered by a confidential nomination and selection process. Applications and informal nominations are not accepted. FCA awards Grants to Artists in the following fields: dance, music/sound, theater/performance art, poetry and the visual arts. Artists are suggested and selected by their peers in a two-stage process. Each year, FCA invites a pool of distinguished artists and arts professionals to serve as nominators and propose one exceptional individual, artists' collective, or performing group whom they feel deserves and will benefit from an unrestricted $25,000 award. Nominators are selected by field, but are free to propose artists working in any of the five areas supported. They are asked to remain anonymous. A selection panel chooses grant recipients on the basis of the merit and imaginativeness of their work and the effect such recognition and support might have at this point in their careers.
Although most artists who receive support live and work in the United States, grants may be awarded internationally. The number of selections made in any of the five fields is determined by the strength of the candidates and FCA's resources in any given year. The grants are not designated for specific projects. Rather, they are intended to provide recipients with the financial means to engage in whatever artistic endeavors they wish to pursue, to research and develop ideas, embark on projects, and complete projects already under way. At the end of the year, artists are asked to describe how the grant was used.
Announcements of Grants to Artists are made in the beginning of the year. The 2010 awards were $25,000 each and were awarded to ten artists. The Directors of the FCA were joined in the grant selection process by writer and Professor of Philosophy and Art Criticism Christoph Cox, writer and Whitney Museum of Art Curator Scott Rothkopf, choreographer and dancer Christopher Williams and Founding Director of Franklin Furnace Archive Martha Wilson. Advisors to the selection committee for the poetry category included poet and editor Charles Bernstein and painter, editor and translator Trevor Winkfield.
Grants to Artists are supported in part by generous grants from The Aaron Copland Fund for Music, The Cricket Foundation, Frederick R. Weisman Philanthropic Foundation and The Elroy & Terry Krumholz Foundation.
View past Individual Grant Recipients
