Arts and Culture Program Grants

_NOTE: We fund ambitious, visionary work at the intersection of the arts and humanities and social justice. If your organization has a project that aligns with one of our grantmaking areas, please consider submitting a new inquiry here._

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.

Guiding strategies

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

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.

Eligibility

_You can learn more about this opportunity by visiting the funder's website._

• In its Arts and Culture program, Mellon makes grants to institutions and organizations in support of communities and individual artists.
• The Foundation makes most of its grants to organizations in the United States that have been determined by the IRS to be section 501(c)(3) public charities.
• The Foundation also makes grants to charitable organizations outside the United States that have 501(c)(3) status or that are equivalent to US public charities.
  • Foundation staff will work with a prospective foreign grantee to determine whether or not an organization can meet the equivalency standard.

Ineligibility

• Mellon does not make grants directly to individuals.
• The Foundation does not fund K-12 education and programming
• The Foundation does not fund fundraising events)
• The Foundation does not fund tuition