The Lillian Orlowsky and William Freed Grant

Deadline: April 1, 2025

Submission Fee: Free

Eligibility:

• You are 45-years old or older.

• You are a painter. For the purposes of this grant, painting is considered the application of various media (oil, acrylic, gouache, ink, tempera, watercolor, egg tempera, casein, enamel) on paper, canvas, fabric, or wood. This includes fresco. This excludes mixed media, encaustic, collage, dry pastels, chalk, digital paintings, prints, and work in graphite or drawings. The use of multiple paint mediums is allowed (ie mixing acrylics with oil paints). Do not submit images in ANY of these excluded mediums as they will not be reviewed. Only paintings will be considered.

• You are American. You must be either a citizen of the United States or have permanent residency in the United States, though you can be presently living abroad.

• A need for financial support must be clear and demonstrated.

• Applicants are encouraged to submit recent works of art as opposed to artworks spanning their entire career.

About the Grant: The Lillian Orlowsky and William Freed Grant is awarded annually to under-recognized American painters over the age of 45 who demonstrate financial need.

The mission of this grant is to promote public awareness of and a commitment to American art, and to encourage interest in painters who lack adequate recognition.

Recipients are selected by a diverse group of jurors—artists, curators, professors, writers—based on the strength of the materials submitted in this application as well as the perceived adherence to the spirit of the grant: to assist under recognized artists. Awards include a cash grant, ranging from $5,000 to $36,000 and an exhibition at PAAM.

The late Lillian Orlowsky and William Freed studied with Hans Hofmann in both New York and Provincetown. They were very active at PAAM as artist members and instructors in the summer school, and they served on a variety of committees throughout their 50 years on Cape Cod. Orlowsky, in particular, was sensitive to the challenges artists face, especially those working against the mainstream or outside of popular schools of art. Her desire to provide financial support to mature artists through this generous endowment gift speaks to her passionate commitment to art for art’s sake and art created regardless of the demands and whims of the marketplace.

APPLICATION REQUIREMENTS: 10 images, artist statement, resume, essay, financial information

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CERF+’s Craft Emergency Relief Fund

Deadline: Ongoing

Submission Fee: Free

CERF is a national, nonprofit organization that offers $3,000 Emergency Relief Grants to craft artists who experienced a recent and substantially disruptive emergency or disaster.

Eligibility: To qualify for an Emergency Relief Grant, applicants need to be craft artists who are 18 years of age or older. They must have been living and working in the U.S. or U.S. Territories for the past two years. Additionally, they should not have received an Emergency Relief Grant in the previous year or exceeded the maximum lifetime limit of 4 grants.

Learn More Here

Sony Alpha Female+ Grant Program

Sony Alpha Female provides a platform for photographers and videographers to share their stories and inspire the world with their creativity, passion, and drive. We aim to make the world a more equal, more representative, and more open place. With you by our side, there’s nothing holding us back.

Sony Alpha Female provides a platform for photographers and videographers to share their stories and inspire the world with their creativity, passion, and drive. We aim to make the world a more equal, more representative, and more open place. With you by our side, there’s nothing holding us back.

GRANTS
We award one grant every month to a photographer or videographer with a project that aligns with our mission to further the female or minority perspective.

Unique to the grant program is that each grant application is considered for all remaining monthly grants, until the last grant is awarded. Also, applicants can apply once a month with a new project idea to increase chances of winning.

ELIGIBILITY
Program is open to legal residents of the 50 United States, D.C., and Canada (excluding the Province of Quebec) that are 18 years and older, regardless of gender identity.

You don’t need to own or use a Sony camera to apply. Winners will be expected to create their project with their new Sony camera and lens within five weeks of being notified that they have won.

JUDGING CRITERIA
All eligible entries for each Monthly Period will be judged by Sony, in its sole discretion, based on the following criteria.

• Project Theme – 30%

• Project Creativity – 30%

• Perceived Project Feasibility – 10%

• Ability to Convey Self Identity of Entrant (i.e. “who Entrant is”) in Personal Video – 10%

• Previous Work Samples as express in Photos or Video Submissions of Rule 2(C) – Quality – 20%

Deadline: Recurring Monthly

No Submission Fee

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Foundation for Contemporary Arts Emergency Grant

Created in 1993 to further FCA's mission to encourage, sponsor, and promote work of a contemporary, experimental nature, Emergency Grants provide urgent funding for visual and performing artists who:

-Have sudden, unanticipated opportunities to present their work to the public when there is insufficient time to seek other sources of funding

-Incur unexpected or unbudgeted expenses for projects close to completion with committed exhibition or performance dates. Our mission is to support experimental artistic practices.

Emergency Grants is the only active, multi-disciplinary program that offers immediate, project-based assistance of this kind to artists living and working anywhere in the United States, for projects occurring in the U.S. and abroad.

• Award Info: The grants range from $500-$3,000

• Categories: Photography, Drawing, Film/Video/New Media, Mixed-Media/Multi-Discipline, Painting, Sculpture

Deadline: Ongoing

Learn More Here

Adolph & Esther Gottlieb Emergency Grant Program

The Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Emergency Grant program is intended to provide interim financial assistance to qualified painters, printmakers, and sculptors whose needs are the result of an unforeseen, catastrophic incident, and who lack the resources to meet that situation. Each grant is given as one-time assistance for a specific emergency, examples of which are fire, flood, or emergency medical need.

The program does not consider requests for dental work, chronic situations, capital improvements, or projects of any kind; nor can it consider situations resulting from general indebtedness or lack of employment.

The maximum amount of this grant is $15,000; an award of $5,000 is typical.

Applicants should be aware that this is a grant program, and that each application is considered on its merits within the criteria of the program. While we attempt to provide assistance to as many applicants as we can, the filing of an application is not, nor should it be perceived as, a guarantee of funding.

ELIGIBILITY
To be eligible for this program, an artist must be able to demonstrate a minimum involvement of ten years in a mature phase of his or her work. Artists must work in the disciplines of painting, sculpture or printmaking. Each application will be reviewed by the Directors, who will exercise their discretion in considering it, and will determine the amount of each award. Applicants should note there is a set amount appropriated for these grants each fiscal year; once this budgetary limit has been reached, the Foundation will not be able to judge any additional requests on their merits.

Deadline: Ongoing

Submission Fee: Not Applicable

Learn More Here

Pop Culture Collaborative grants: PROGRAM AREA 1: ARTISTS ADVANCING CULTURE CHANGE

THE POP CULTURE COLLABORATIVE’S VISION AND PURPOSE
Throughout America’s history, the most transformative cultural shifts—from slavery abolition to Reconstruction, “I Have A Dream” to “Yes We Can,” #BlackLivesMatter, the DREAM-ers, and Love Is Love—have been achieved by movements and leaders who have awakened people’s deep yearning to belong in a pluralist America. In each case, the tug-of-war between belonging and exclusion sparked a portal moment—a cracking open of the public imagination about what this nation is capable of becoming.

We believe our nation is on the precipice of another historic breakthrough: a once-in-a-generation opportunity for the American people to decisively choose to move in the direction of pluralism and justice. How will we respond to this call for transformation? Will we submit to authoritarian narratives that entice us to retreat back into the systems of exclusion and violence that stain our past, or will we step boldly through the portal and onto the path towards our pluralist future?

Americans have the opportunity to ask: What society do we yearn to create and who can we empower to lead the way? If, as civil rights scholar Vincent Harding once said, America is “a country that has yet to be born,” the pop culture for social change field can help prepare and guide millions of people through this process of becoming something new by clearing away the detritus of our nation’s past, replacing fetid, crumbling ideas and norms with ones rooted in justice, care, and connection.

Together, artists, organizers, strategists, and researchers can create the stories that help the American public understand and interpret the choices we face through the lens of our shared commitment to becoming a pluralist nation.

Over the long-term, the Collaborative is working to support the growth of a pop culture for social change field capable of building the yearning in most Americans (more than 150 million people) to actively co-create a just and pluralist society in which everyone is perceived to belong, inherently, and is treated as such. The Pop Culture Collaborative defines a pluralist society as a culture in which the majority of people in a community and nation are engaged in the hard and delicate work of belonging together in a just and equitable society.

GRANT ELIGIBILITY
Individuals/organizations with fiscal sponsorships as well as nonprofits and for-profits in the United States are eligible for Pop Culture Collaborative grants.

To be considered, proposals must engage, affect, center, and/or support at least one or all of our multi-community focus areas: people of color, immigrants, refugees, Indigenous peoples, and/or Muslims, particularly those who are women, queer, transgender, and/or disabled. Initiatives with an intersectional and intentional focus on gender justice, LGBTQIA rights, disability, democratic fairness, pluralist values, and economic justice are highly prioritized. The Collaborative seeks grantee partners working at the intersection of pop culture and social change who:

Are artists, activists, organizations, strategists, researchers, and/or others who identify culture change as a clear outcome of their work and pop culture strategies as a critical aspect of their culture change efforts.
The Pop Culture Collaborative provides grants to artists and organizations or companies that support artist cohorts, from various disciplines, locations, and industries to bring their artistic vision to mass audiences, while also contributing to field-wide efforts to build public yearning for a pluralist America.

We seek to create a large, networked community of artists who believe that their creative work and leadership have the power to inspire millions of Americans to actively co-create a pluralist society.

Areas of interest include:

Supporting artists and cultural organizations to conceptualize, develop, and produce creative works that can help build public yearning for pluralist culture in America.
Supporting artists to gather for shared learning, networking, community-knitting, and power-building, especially spaces that bring artists into direct and meaningful connection with frontline activists and culture change strategists.
Helping artists and organizations develop the methodology, networks, infrastructure, pipelines, and leadership skills needed to redistribute access and power in their respective industries to historically excluded communities.

The Pop Culture Collaborative accepts proposals by invitation only. However, we have created a simple process for potential grantees to self-evaluate whether they are a match with the Collaborative’s goals and guidelines, and if so, to submit an idea for our consideration. It is important to note that an idea submission is not a proposal. The Collaborative will respond only to idea submissions that the staff team has reviewed and deem a potential match.

Submission Deadline: Ongoing

• Categories: Craft/Traditional Arts, Photography, Drawing, Film/Video/New Media, Mixed-Media/Multi-Discipline, Painting, Sculpture

• Location: New York, New York 10008, United States

Learn More Here

JFNY Grant for Arts & Culture

The Japan Foundation, New York office (JFNY) accepts applications from non-profit organizations for projects that take place within the 37 states east of the Rocky Mountains, plus Washington D.C., listed below for the JFNY Grant for Arts & Culture on a rolling basis throughout the year. This grant aims to support projects that will further understanding of Japanese arts and culture. Successful projects are granted up to $5,000. This grant also supports online projects related to Arts & Cultural Exchange that incorporate issues pertaining to the COVID-19 global pandemic such as virtual exhibitions, virtual performances, film streaming, online conference as well as webinar. Priority will be given to those projects that have secured additional funding from sources other than the Japan Foundation, as well as projects that take place in areas where access to Japanese cultural events are relatively limited.

Deadline: Ongoing

• Award Info: $5,000 (average: US$2,000)

• Categories: Craft/Traditional Arts, Photography, Drawing, Film/Video/New Media, Mixed-Media/Multi-Discipline, Painting, Sculpture

Learn More Here

The Artadia Awards

The Artadia Awards provide financial support, exposure and recognition to artists. The awards are unrestricted, allowing artists to use the funds in any way they choose.

Each year, an open-call application is made available in each of the six active partner cities. Supporting artists equitably is a critical part of the Artadia Award process: we consider the unique populations of each community and are proud to reflect our country’s diversity with an Awardee pool that is over 50 percent female and over 40 percent persons of color.

In addition to financial support, Awardees can participate in the Artadia Network to receive structured opportunities for valuable new connections and resource sharing as well as receive a dedicated webpage on Artadia’s online Artist Registry. Connections fostered by Artadia have facilitated major steps in Awardees’ careers, such as inclusion in prominent exhibitions (e.g. five Awardees were featured in the 2017 Whitney Biennial, and six in 2019).

Beyond Artadia’s anchored program cities, we offer periodic awards with partners such as NADA, EXPO, Prospect New Orleans, and 21c Museum Hotels.

ELIGIBILITY
Applicants must be a contemporary visual artist, making artwork for presentation in a contemporary art context: museum, galleries, arts non-profit, the public art realm, etc. Artadia does not fund filmmakers making films for distribution in cinematic venues, or those working in choreography presented outside of a contemporary art context.

Applicants must be a contemporary visual artist, making artwork for presentation in a contemporary art context: museum, galleries, arts non-profit, the public art realm, etc. Artadia does not fund filmmakers making films for distribution in cinematic venues, or those working in choreography presented outside of a contemporary art context.

APPLICATIONS
The Artadia application is open for one month in each program city, is free to apply and open-call.

ACTIVE AWARD CITIES
Atlanta
Boston
Chicago
Houston
Los Angeles
New York City
San Francisco Bay Area

Artadia chooses to fund artists in cities that demonstrate a commitment to contemporary art. These cities are notable for the active presence of local artists in the community, art institutions recognized for innovative contemporary programming, a commercial art market that offers artists opportunities to show their work locally and at art fairs, and exemplary schools that prepare artists through undergraduate and graduate programs.

SELECTIONS
A jury of three curators assembled by Artadia, including one locally based curator, reviews all applications and determines a short list of six Finalists. A second jury, assembled by Artadia, made up of one juror from the application review and one new juror conducts virtual studio visits with each Finalist for 45 minutes.*

AWARDS
Following the studio visits, the second round jury will designate three Awardees to receive unrestricted funds of $15,000*, as well as access to the Artadia Network. Awardees are determined based on the sole discretion of the jury. *Marciano Artadia Awardee receives unrestricted funds of $25,000.

For their time and labor in the application process, Artadia provides stipends to each Finalist ultimately not chosen as an Awardee.

No Fee

Deadline: Varies for each location

Learn More Here