Artist Funding Resources: Grants

To find more relevant titles about proposal and grant writing in the catalog, you can browse the "Proposal writing for grants" Subject Heading in the catalog. 

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Women Photograph is a non-profit that launched in 2017 to elevate the voices of women* and nonbinary visual journalists. They offer two types of grants to women creating documentary photography projects.

The Women Photograph Project Grants support new or in progress documentary photographic projects by visual journalists. There are 5 grantees per year, and each grant is $5,000. Funding may be used to cover the hard costs of reporting, photographers’ creative fees, and any other expenses that support the production of new work.

The Women Photograph + Leica is a $10,000 grant for a women photographer per year to work on an ongoing documentary project. The Women Photograph + Leica Grant is open to photographers who can demonstrate a long-term commitment to their story. Additional consideration will be given to applicants who are engaged with the communities they cover beyond traditional journalistic documentation. Funding should primarily be used to support the production of new work, including the hard costs of reporting, and photographers’ creative fees, but may also partially fund community engagement programming.

The Center for Crafts, based in Asheville, North Carolina, has a number of grants for artists, researchers, and students dedicated to practicing and preserving craft arts in the United States.

The Craft Research Fund -- Artist Fellowship is a $10,000 grant for five artists to support research projects that advance, expand, and support the creation of new research and knowledge through craft practice.

The Teaching Artist Cohort is a grant and educational experience, where twenty-one mid-career craft artists will receive an unrestricted grant of $10,000 and participate in an 8-month cohort experience where they will be guided through training that encourages and sustains a generative practice as both artists and educators. 

The Windgate-Lamar Fellowship is for ten graduating college seniors with exemplary skill in craft. Awardees receive $15,000 — one of the largest awards offered nationally to art students.

There are also fellowships and grants for scholars/researchers and curators through the Center for Crafts, which could be applicable to some of our patrons as well.

The Lower Manhattan Cultural Council serves, connects, and makes space for artists and community. They have a number of residency and grant programs. 

The first is the UMEZ Arts Engagement Grant, which is a grant program designed to enhance the diversity and frequency of arts and cultural presentations in Upper Manhattan. The program provides direct support for these activities to Upper Manhattan’s artists and nonprofit arts organizations under the guiding principle that support for artists of diverse disciplines, practices, cultural backgrounds, and career stages contributes to the vibrancy and sustainability of the communities in which they live and work. Artists and arts organization located in upper Manhattan who need financial assistance for planned programming are encouraged to apply. 

The other is Creative Engagement Grant, which is an arts funding program that provides seed grants to individual artists and nonprofit organizations for projects and activities that offer Manhattan communities diverse artistic experiences. Each year the the program supports over 150 arts programs in Manhattan, including concerts, performances, public art, exhibitions, screenings, festivals, workshops, readings and more. Artists with public art project proposals are encouraged to apply. More information can be found on their webpage.

The Adolph and Esther Gottleib Foundation Individual Support Grants wishes to encourage visual artists who have dedicated their lives to developing their art, regardless of their level of commercial success. These grants are for mature artists who have been working for at least 20 years, beyond "mid-career".  

These grants are $25,000, awarded for 25 artists per year. 

The Getty is a leading global arts organization committed to exhibiting, conserving, and understanding the world’s artistic and cultural heritage. The Getty Research Institute library collections include over one million books, periodicals, study photographs, and auction catalogs as well as extensive special collections of rare and unique materials. Focusing on art history, architecture, and related fields, they begin with the archaeology of prehistory and extend to the contemporary moment. 

The Getty Library Research Grants are short term grants offering support for researchers using the Getty Library. There are also specific focused grants around certain collections.

Whitney and Lee Kaplan African American Visual Culture Library Grant: Supports research that utilizes a recently acquired, encyclopedic, and interdisciplinary collection of over 3,000 published works related to African American art.

Conservation Collection Library Grant: Supports research that utilizes the collection developed by the Getty Conservation Institute (GCI) and which consists of specialized research materials related to the preservation and conservation of material cultural heritage.

The grant amount changes based on the location of the researcher, but the awards range from $1,500 to $4,500. The research period can range from 5 days to 8 weeks. For more information, visit the Library Grantee Program Information.