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.
The 2011 Grants to Artists awards are $25,000 each; the fourteen recipients are profiled in this booklet. The Directors of the FCA were joined in the grant selection process by art historian, critic and Director of the Graduate Program at the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College Johanna Burton; writer, critic, and philosopher Christoph Cox; artist and White Columns Director/Chief Curator Matthew Higgs; and performer and founding member of The Wooster Group Kate Valk. Advisors to the selection committee for the Poetry category included poets Larry Fagin and Elizabeth Robinson.
Grants to Artists were supported in part by generous grants from the Ellsworth Kelly Foundation and the Frederick R. Weisman Philanthropic Foundation.
View past Grants to Individual Artists
