Our Story

Mission

Creative Capital uplifts risk-taking, underinvested artists with unrestricted project grants, professional development, and community-building services to advance freedom of expression and to foster sustainable careers. Creative Capital Awards are made via a democratic, national open call process.

Impact

Over 25 years, Creative Capital has fundraised and awarded $55 million in grants and services to 1,010 artists to create innovative new works across the country in the visual arts, performing arts, film, technology, literature, multidisciplinary, and socially engaged forms. 

Creative Capital invests in experimental, adventurous work grappling with urgent issues, including: life on land, artificial intelligence, mass incarceration, civil rights, and mental health. It also supports risk-taking, compelling ideas regardless of whether there is market demand, a presenter, or a preexisting audience.

Today, its purposefully democratic grantmaking process—open call, external review, multidisciplinary—remains the only openly accessible national channel for original artistic ideas and new voices to be seen by experts in the field and to receive funding, recognition, and industry validation. Creative Capital receives thousands of project proposals each year from all regions, states, and territories, demonstrating the urgent and widespread need for project support.

The Creative Capital Award is recognized for funding boundary-pushing artists working across an array of disciplines, and for identifying and supporting talent at catalytic moments in artists’ lives. Creative Capital Awardees have gone on to build thriving practices, start their own businesses, acquire gallery spaces and real estate, and give back to local communities and to Creative Capital in meaningful ways. 

Our Awardees have received prestigious honors and other accolades, including: 169 Guggenheim Fellowships, 21 MacArthur “Genius” Fellowships, 6 Pulitzer Prizes, and 3 Academy Awards and 15 nominations. 

For 25 years, Creative Capital has remained unwavering in its commitment to fund the creation of new works by visionary artists of all backgrounds across the entire landscape of America. Founded in 1999 as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization to defend freedom of expression after the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) discontinued most of its grant programs for individual artists under pressure from Congress. Creative Capital’s unrestricted project grants are purposefully made through an open, national, multidisciplinary, external review process for proposals for new artistic works.

In honor of its 25th Anniversary, and to expand our national service to artists, Creative Capital will continue to provide Creative Capital Awards to create innovative new works in all disciplines, and it has launched a new initiative, the State of the Art Prize, to recognize and support one artist in every U.S. state and territory with an unrestricted artist grant. The grant recipients are scheduled to be announced in the Spring of 2026.

Creative Capital also serves the public by providing artists with access to resources that will help them build thriving careers, including the new Creative Capital Artist Lab, an online curriculum for career development, and Artist Opportunities, a free listing of grants, residencies, and opportunities. Creative Capital Artist Lab courses are available in English, Spanish, and with ASL interpretation to maximize accessibility.

In an effort to augment its mission, Creative Capital has collaborated with other organizations who share its values of uplifting individual artists. One past project was designed to support creators, and their artistic expressions, from historically underinvested communities on a third-party platform. This past project was the target of a complaint to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) in April 2025; however, the project concluded in February 2025.

Today, Creative Capital’s mission to uplift individual artists creating new work in Visual Arts, Performing Arts, Film, Literature, as well as multidisciplinary and socially engaged forms, is more urgent and relevant than ever. Creative Capital relies on the generous support of foundations, institutional funders, and individual donors to power its grassroots work of amplifying artists’ voices with grants and professional services.

Creative Capital continues to need and welcome supporters who share the belief that individual artists are essential pillars of our democracy. Please donate today in support of artistic freedom.

Christine Kuan, President & Executive Director

Reginald M. Browne, Chair, Board of Directors

April 28, 2025

After the culture wars of the 1990s, Archibald L. Gillies, then President of The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, believed that artistic freedom is critical to our democracy and established Creative Capital Foundation as an independent 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization expressly to defend freedom of expression by funding individual artists creating new work.

With Founding President Ruby Lerner at the helm of Creative Capital from 1999 to 2016, Creative Capital redefined artist support for generations of artists and organizations by pioneering a transformative, long-term grantmaking model. Lerner also championed original ideas and invested significantly in community-building.