Grant Programs

Since FCA's inception, more than 6,800 grants awarded to artists and arts organizations—totaling over $24 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 four core grant programs: Grants to Artists, The John Cage Award, Emergency Grants, and The Ellsworth Kelly Award.

In 2021, Foundation for Contemporary Arts distributed over $4.1 million in grants to individual artists, including:

$2,584,500 through the FCA COVID-19 Bridge Fund—1,723 relief grants of $1,500 each
$274,000 through the FCA Emergency Grants Covid-19 Fund—137 relief grants of $2,000 each
$800,000 through Grants to Artists—twenty grants of $40,000 each, including six awards named for artists long associated with FCA, and the biennial Merce Cunningham Award
$350,000 through Emergency Grants—197 grants of varying amounts, for urgent project needs
The $40,000 Ellsworth Kelly Award
$22,000—grants of $2,000 each to eleven artist-founded or -led mutual aid funds
$30,000 in Contemporary Visual Arts Scholarships

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.

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.

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