Grant Programs

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

Unrestricted, by-nomination grants made to innovative artists working across the fields of dance, music/sound, performance art/theater, poetry, and the visual arts, these $45,000 cash awards are intended to provide recipients with the financial means to engage in any artistic endeavors they wish to pursue.

Grants to Artists

The following Grants to Artists awards are endowed or funded by artist foundations:

Merce Cunningham Award
Helen Frankenthaler Award for Painting
Roy Lichtenstein Award
Richard Pousette-Dart Award
Robert Rauschenberg Award
Dorothea Tanning Award
Cy Twombly Award for Poetry
C.D. Wright Award for Poetry

Six performers dressed in dark blue, yellow, and orange colors on a stage. Five of them move in various poses while the middle reads from an open laptop held upwards.

2018 grantee Netta Yerushalmy, performance still from FCA-supported Paramodernities, at Jacob's Pillow, Becket, MA, 2018. Performers (l-r): Stanley Gambucci, Jeremy Neal, Thomas F. DeFrantz, Nicholas Leichter, Brittany Engel-Adams, and Netta Yerushalmy.

John Cage Award

An unrestricted $45,000 award made biennially in recognition of outstanding achievement in the arts and named for one of FCA’s co-founders.

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Portrait of Meredith Monk dressed in a black long-sleeved shirt, golden earrings and red lipstick – smiling while flipping with her raised arms the two low pigtail braids upwards.

2020 John Cage Award recipient Meredith Monk. Photo by Christine Alicino.

Ellsworth Kelly Award

A $45,000 award made annually to create a solo exhibition opportunity for a contemporary visual artist at a U.S. art museum, or a university or college art gallery.

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Round green table with various small statues, pots, books, white clay and a still screen of a grassy area scattered around surrounded by cameras. Behind it a projection of four wall-size images depicting the statues as silhouettes in front of grassy areas and plants.

2016 Ellsworth Kelly Award recipient, The Institute of Contemporary Art at The University of Pennsylvania. Installation view of Cauleen Smith: Give It or Leave It, at The Institute of Contemporary Art at The University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, 2018. Photo by Constance Mensh.