Over 25 years, Creative Capital has fundraised and awarded $55 million in grants and services to 1,010 artists to create 830 innovative new works across the country in the visual arts, performing arts, film, technology, literature, multidisciplinary, and socially engaged forms. 

Achieving greater equity in the arts requires widening access to funding to individual artists creating new work. Project funding is critical to an artist’s ability to create work for exhibitions, film festivals, theaters, performances, concerts, and publications, which directly impacts their long-term livelihood and success. In recent years, Creative Capital has awarded 75% artists of color, women, LGBTQ artists, and artists with disabilities.

Creative Capital provides a transformative grantmaking model that offers three pillars of artist support: unrestricted project grants, bespoke professional services (including peer mentorship, legal guidance, financial planning, communications strategy, and more), and community-building opportunities. The Creative Capital philanthropic model of transformative support has impacted not just artists, but the arts ecosystem as a whole—inspiring countless other nonprofits and individuals to invest in the careers of artists in a holistic way.

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: 160 Guggenheim Fellowships, 21 MacArthur “Genius” Fellowships, and 3 Academy Awards and 15 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, and many others.

• 2024 Impact Report
• 2023 Impact Report
• 2022 Impact Report

Today, Creative Capital is the only national grant program dedicated to funding artists creating new work in every discipline, including visual arts, performing arts, film, literature, technology, multidisciplinary, and socially engaged forms. It has a track record of investing in experimental, innovative work grappling with urgent issues, including: climate change, reproductive rights, mass incarceration, civil rights, and mental health. 

Its open call, democratic, external review process is a vital gateway for artists to receive national recognition, industry validation, and additional accolades and financial support. Since the pandemic, there has been an urgent need for project funding. Creative Capital has seen a 65% increase in applications since 2021.

In this year’s 2026 Open Call, Creative Capital is doubling the number of artists served by its grant program. It plans to provide 50 Creative Capital Awards of up to $50,000 in unrestricted project grants, plus bespoke professional development services and community-building opportunities. It is also launching the new State of the Art Prize, an unrestricted artist grant of $10,000 to one artist in every U.S. state and territory. Creative Capital is fundraising for these essential programs in order to uplift more regional and rural artists, to invest in grassroots creative economies, and to foster a vibrant cultural landscape across America.

Creative Capital was established in 1999 after the U.S. Congress pressured the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) to end the majority of its grants for individual artists. Depriving artists of funding to create new work was a government strategy to silence the voices of artists of color, LGBTQ artists, women, and underserved artists. 

Archibald L. Gillies, then President of The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, believed that artistic freedom is critical to our democracy. Built on the legacy of one individual artist, the Warhol Foundation also recognizes the power one single artist can have on changing the world. The Warhol Foundation established Creative Capital Foundation in 1999 as an artist-centered, 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, foundations, academic institutions, industry professionals, and philanthropists. Lerner championed groundbreaking artists, original ideas, and invested significantly in community-building.

Today, Creative Capital’s work is more urgent and relevant than ever. At the heart of our organization is a deep commitment to a democratic process of grantmaking that is open, national, and accessible to individual artists across the country.

Appointed in 2021, President & Executive Director Christine Kuan has fundraised and awarded $10 million in unrestricted project grants to more than 200 artists working across the visual arts, performing arts, film, literature, technology, multidisciplinary, and socially engaged forms. Witnessing the urgent need for project funding by artists across the country, Kuan increased the number of grants to artists from 35 to 50 grants of $50,000 in 2022. In February 2025, in honor of Creative Capital’s 25th anniversary, Kuan launched the new State of the Art Prize with the goal of awarding one artist in every U.S. state and inhabited territory with a $10,000 unrestricted artist grant. 

Creative Capital also believes that artists need access to trusted educational content to grow their practice. In 2023, Kuan launched the Creative Capital Curriculum, which provides cohesive, online, self-paced professional development courses, including how to craft artist statements, assemble grant proposals, plan social media, and more. 

The Curriculum courses and Artist Lab webinars are designed to be accessible in English and Spanish, with ASL interpretation, to foster greater equity in the arts. More than 15,000 artists in 106 countries use the Curriculum. The Curriculum is free for individual personal use. Institutions may license the Curriculum by becoming an Institutional Member for a membership fee. Institutional members include: RISD, UCLA, NYU Production Lab, Kresge Arts in Detroit, Texas A&M, and others.

Creative Capital also publishes Artist Opportunities listings to save artists time and labor by aggregating regional, national, and international grants, residencies, and other opportunities.

• Ahead of Creative Capital’s 25th Anniversary, President Christine Kuan Reflects on a Legacy of Risk-Taking (Cultured)
• Christine Kuan, President and Executive Director, Creative Capital: Supporting artistic and cultural discourse (Philanthropy News Digest)
• Can Philanthropy Shape Equity in the Arts? 5 Questions to Consider When Making a Donation (Artnet)
• How Ruby Lerner’s Vision Shaped Creative Capital’s Unique Model
• Financial Heart & Soul of Creative Capital: Leslie Singer on 20 Years
• Read more about 20 years of Creative Capital

Creative Capital believes in:

• Advocating for freedom of expression
• Challenging formal, social, and political conventions
• Fostering a spirit of mutual generosity, seeking to foster a diverse and equitable ecosystem in the arts
• Developing more sustainable social, economic, and environmental practices

Creative Capital would like to call attention to the complex history of the lands on which we live and work. Our headquarters are situated on the unceded, ancestral homelands of the Lenape people, called Lenapehoking, commonly referred to as Manhattan. The Creative Capital website and servers occupy Ohlone, Chochenyo, and Ramaytush land, commonly referred to as South Beach, California, and Tongva land, commonly referred to as Los Angeles.

We commit to responsible stewardship of the land and respect for the First Nations. We also acknowledge the people forcibly taken from their ancestral lands in Africa and enslaved to build the economic infrastructure from which this country now benefits. We furthermore recognize the interconnections between the enduring impacts of colonization, enslavement, and our current climate emergency, which manifest in a myriad of ways including habitat destruction and global dispossession, environmental exploitation in Indigenous communities and in communities of color, and climate refugee crises.

Creative Capital commits to being more sustainable in its operations including: reducing energy consumption, limiting air travel, using recycled paper products, eliminating unnecessary single use plastic, and impact investing.