Grant Programs

Overview Grants by Application Grants by Nomination COVID-19 Relief Grants Frequently Asked Questions

Since FCA's inception, more than 7,000 grants awarded to artists and arts organizations—totaling over $27 million—have provided opportunities for creative exploration and development.

FCA supports individual artists and collectives working in dance, music/sound, performance art/theater, poetry, and the visual arts through three core grant programs: Grants to Artists, Emergency Grants, and The Ellsworth Kelly Award.

In 2023, Foundation for Contemporary Arts distributed $1.45 million in grants to individual artists, including:

  • $945,000 through Grants to Artists—twenty-one grants of $45,000 each, including eight awards named for artists long associated with FCA
  • $389,400 through Emergency Grants—208 grants of varying amounts, for urgent project needs
  • The $45,000 Ellsworth Kelly Award
  • $70,000 in Contemporary Visual Arts Scholarships
Grant Programs

2017 grantee Linda Austin, performance still from a work-in-progress showing of FCA-supported a world, a world, at Performance Works NW, Portland, 2017. Performers: claire barrera, Nancy Ellis, Danielle Ross, Noelle Stiles, and Nancy Ellis Takahiro Yamamoto. Photo by Chelsea Petrakis.

Grant Programs

2020 grantee Kerstin Brätsch in collaboration with Deibo Eilers as KAYA, Radical Passivity: Politics of the Flesh, 2020, nGbk, Berlin, Germany. Photo by Benjamin Renter.

Grant Programs

Maria Bauman-Morales, performance still from Emergency Grants-supported (re)Source, at Bronx Academy of Art and Dance in Bronx, New York, 2019. Photo by Brian Rogers.

"I was able to actually pay myself a salary for making a dance for the first time. Basically, this grant saved my ass."

— Pam Tanowitz, choreographer
2010 Grants to Artists | Dance