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.

Stephanie Ybarra is a program officer for Mellon’s Arts and Culture grantmaking area. Photo: Jeff Barry 

Stephanie Ybarra

In conversation with Mellon Program Officer Stephanie Ybarra: Responding to longstanding financial pressures, the next generation of nonprofit theaters will likely look very different.

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Program Officer, Arts and Culture

Dynamic

The State of Nonprofit Theater in America Invites New Possibilities

Andrea Barnwell Brownlee on how museums of the future can be “boundless”

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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

“Written on Skin,” by Charo Oquet, 2019. Courtesy of US Latinx Art Forum. Oquet is part of the 2024 cohort of Latinx Artist Fellows. 

A white walled and ceilinged room with multicolored streamings hanging from the walls and ceiling forming a web in the middle

The 2024 Latinx Artist Fellowships provide $50,000 in unrestricted funding and a year-long program of professional engagement opportunities


US Latinx Art Forum Announces New Latinx Artist Fellows

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

A side profile of a Black poet who is wearing glasses and a hat with a feather hat pin.

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

Five people stand together in a group photo. They are laughing and smiling.

Power of the Word

Five colorful neon signs hang on the wall with messages that include, "Freedom cannot wait," "Brown owned," and "America is for Dreamers."

Public Places‚ Public Stories

A group of Indigenous Maskoke people stand and sit in the wooden frame of a structure in a woods

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

Students walk through the campus of the University of Hawaii

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History

Grantmaking areas

Grantmaking Areas

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Financials

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