Creative Capital Award
The Creative Capital Award empowers individual artists with unrestricted project grants and professional services to bring bold, innovative, and impactful new works to life.
Application Details
Championing Visionary Artists
The Creative Capital Award recognizes boundary-pushing artists working across an array of disciplines at catalytic moments in their careers. Since its inception, the Creative Capital Award has funded 1,010 visionary artists working in the visual arts, performing arts, dance, theater, jazz, film, literature, technology, and multidisciplinary and socially engaged forms.
Creative Capital Awardees have presented across the country at leading venues, festivals, and institutions, including MoMA, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Lincoln Center, LACMA, Broadway, Venice Biennale, Sundance Film Festival, Walker Art Center, and SXSW. Awardees have received other prestigious honors and accolades, including: 169 Guggenheim Fellowships, 21 MacArthur “Genius” Fellowships, 6 Pulitzer Prizes, and 3 Academy Awards, and 15 Academy Award nominations.
Notable awardees include: Jeffrey Gibson, Simone Leigh, Anicka Yi, Guadalupe Maravilla, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, Larissa FastHorse, Sidra Bell, Alice Sheppard, Terri Lyne Carrington, Etienne Charles, Garrett Bradley, Laura Poitras, Cristina Ibarra, Chris Eyre, Cory Arcangel, Rachel Rossin, Titus Kaphar, Percival Everett, Maggie Nelson, Rebecca Solnit, and many others.
Explore Our Awardees
Sage Ni'Ja Whitson
2019 Awardee
"Creative Capital has been a sweet transformative gift. I accessed funding to purchase computer and VR equipment to deepen my work in virtual-reality design, now a staple in my practice."
Sage Ni'Ja Whitson
2019 Awardee
Sage Ni'Ja Whitson
2019 Awardee
A Transformative Grant
Fostering Artistic Freedom
The Creative Capital Award provides individual artists with unrestricted project grants and professional development services for the creation of innovative, original, groundbreaking new artistic works. Grants are awarded via a national, open call, external review process. Creative Capital’s transformative giving approach is built on the principle that artists need funding as well as networks and advisory services in order to realize ambitious projects and thriving careers.
Building Community
Woven into the ethos of the Creative Capital Award is a spirit of generosity—helping artists nurture relationships that will carry them through their professional careers. Creative Capital hosts regional and national artists gatherings, inviting awardees to come together with industry experts, cultural producers, arts professionals, and philanthropists to preview new projects, discuss opportunities and challenges, and celebrate our artist-centered community.
Serving Grassroots Creative Communities
In honor of 25 years of grantmaking, Creative Capital will expand its support of individual artists with the launch of the new State of the Art Prize. Through the open call process for the Creative Capital Award, Creative Capital will also select recipients of the State of the Art Prize, which aims to recognize one artist residing in each U.S. state and territory with an unrestricted artist grant. All applicants to the Creative Capital Award are automatically considered for the State of the Art Prize and are evaluated for the Prize using the same criteria; there is no separate application process. Both the State of the Art Prize and the Creative Capital Award are one-time awards.
Support State of the Art
Jules Rosskam
2019 Awardee and Sundance Film Festival Next Award–winner for "Desire Lines"
"This award was the first—and only—support we received from an arts institution for this project. I will be eternally grateful to Creative Capital for taking a chance on me."
Jules Rosskam
2019 Awardee and Sundance Film Festival Next Award–winner for "Desire Lines"
Jules Rosskam
2019 Awardee and Sundance Film Festival Next Award–winner for "Desire Lines"