Creative Capital uplifts artists with unrestricted project grants to create innovative new works and professional development services to help build thriving practices. Creative Capital Awards are made via a national, open call process.
Mission
Impact
LIZN’BOW (2023 Creative Capital Awardees), Novelitas de Niñas, a Franklin Furnace commission at Bowery Poetry Club. Photo by Walter Wlodarczyk.
Since its founding in 1999, Creative Capital has fundraised and awarded grants and services to 1,010 artists to create 830 innovative new works across the country in the visual arts (painting, sculpture, installation, architecture), performing arts (dance, theater, jazz, opera, music), film, technology, literature, multidisciplinary, and socially engaged forms.
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.
Creative Capital provides a transformative grantmaking model that offers three areas 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: 169 Guggenheim Fellowships, 21 MacArthur “Genius” Fellowships, 6 Pulitzer Prizes, 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.
Creative Capital Foundation
Statement on Grantmaking to Artists
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