Arts and Culture

# Three interconnected strategies guide Mellon’s Arts and Culture grantmaking.   

## Supporting visionary artists and practitioners and the participatory roles they play across institutions and communities  

Artists reveal our shared humanity and connect us all. We invest in visionary artists and arts leaders whose practices extend beyond their studios or workspaces to catalyze change in our world. We celebrate artist-driven, cross-sector collaborations and acknowledge the dimensional nature of an artist’s work and place in society.  

## Supporting exceptional organizations and artists that have been historically under-resourced, including the creation, conservation, and preservation of their artwork, histories, collections, and traditions  

Mellon seeks to engender an understanding of broader histories, narratives, and aesthetic traditions through multi-year support of artists and communities historically subject to disinvestment. Grants seek to ensure the legacies of many instead of few.

## Creating scaffolding for experiments with new economic paradigms and institutional models that center equity and justice and creative problem-solving in arts and culture   

Mellon seeds experiments that center and embolden artists to imagine new structures and organizational models that reflect their holistic approach to social change. Mellon provides support for projects that pilot new operating and funding models for individual artists and organizations that foster a more inclusive, nimble, and cooperative sector. 

## How to apply
In our Arts and Culture program, Mellon makes grants to institutions and organizations in support of communities and individual artists. Mellon does not make grants directly to individuals, although we do support regranting programs that benefit individuals. All grants result from invitations issued by Mellon to institutions with which staff have engaged in preliminary exchanges. While we are unable to consider uninvited proposals, qualifying organizations are welcome to submit inquiries via our Grants Portal.

Please do not send inquiries about possibilities for support to more than one Mellon grantmaking area. If you already have an account on Fluxx, please contact program staff directly.


Guiding strategies

In an abstract illustration, a figure stands before a large canvas with a circle. The illustration evokes a person standing in a gallery or other space and viewing a work of art before them.

Proposal Guidelines: Arts and Culture

Today's arts ecosystem still exists in a transactional way where an artist makes a work and hopes people
can access it somehow. As we push forward our own work and imagine a new and different arts
ecosystem, we really do believe it must center the artist in a way to support the totality of their
humanity and not only the virtuosity of their skill.

Emil Kang on a new arts ecosystem

Headshot of Emil J. Kang

As we imagine a new arts ecosystem, it must center the artist in a way to support the totality of their humanity and not only the virtuosity of their skill.

Miki Garcia on Centering the Margins

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Collected research reports and case studies from the Art Museum Staff Demographic Study on ethnicity, gender, and other indicators of diversity of the staffs of art museums across the United States.

Aiding the Evolution of Art Museums to Reflect the Diversity of Our Country

Latinx Arts Fellowship

Creatives Rebuild New York is a three-year, $125 million investment in the financial stability of New York State artists and the organizations that employ them.

Creatives Rebuild New York

Art and artists are essential to human connection.

Through our Arts and Culture program, Mellon celebrates the power of the arts to challenge, activate, and nourish the human spirit. We support exceptional creative practice, scholarship, and conservation practices while nurturing a representative and robust arts and culture ecosystem. We work with artists, curators, conservators, scholars, and organizations to ensure equitable access to excellent arts and cultural experiences and support approaches that place the arts and artists at the center of thriving, healthy communities.

Artists as Catalysts

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Beyond Incarceration

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Civic Engagement

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Evolving Higher Education

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Expanding Public Knowledge

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Monuments and Memory

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Multivocality

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Power of the Word

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Public Places‚ Public Stories

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Puerto Rico and Its Diaspora

In a vertical image, a black leather vest is adorned with colorful pins across the front of it. Embroidery on the vest reads: "Felícitas "La Prieta" Méndez" 

University Everywhere

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Mission

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History

Grantmaking areas

Grantmaking Areas

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Financials

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