Grant Programs

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

Since FCA's inception, more than 5,000 grants awarded to artists and arts organizations—totaling over $20 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.

Foundation for Contemporary Arts distributed nearly $3.8 million in 2020, including:

  • $2,796,000 through the FCA Emergency Grants COVID-19 Fund—1,398 relief grants of $2,000 each
  • $720,000 through Grants to Artists—eighteen grants of $40,000 each, including six awards named for artists long associated with FCA
  • $78,743 through Emergency Grants—46 grants of varying amounts, all made prior to the start of the pandemic
  • The biennial $40,000 John Cage Award
  • The $40,000 Ellsworth Kelly Award
  • $22,000—grants of $2,000 each to eleven artist-founded or -led mutual aid funds
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