Joan Mitchell Fellowship Grant

The Joan Mitchell Fellowship supports 15 US-based artists in painting and sculpture with $60,000 over five years. It offers crucial financial resources, skills development, and community building. The fellowship also includes workshops, consultations, and opportunities for residencies, particularly for those in their fourth year or beyond. The program emphasizes diversity, encouraging nominations from underrepresented artists to foster a rich cultural discourse in the arts.

Overview
The Joan Mitchell Fellowship annually recognizes and supports 15 US-based artists working in the evolving fields of painting and sculpture. Encompassing long-term financial support, skills development, and community building, the multi-year Fellowship structure provides critical resources that artists need to sustain their practices.
The Fellowship provides each artist with $60,000 in unrestricted funds, distributed over the course of five years. The financial support is interwoven with learning, peer engagement, and network-building opportunities, tailored by staff based on the artists’ interests and feedback. The offerings include in-person and virtual convenings; workshops on finance, legacy planning, and self-advocacy; and consultations with arts professionals. The depth of each artist’s participation directly impacts their experience of the Fellowship. Fellows in the fourth year of the program and beyond are also eligible to apply for a residency at the Joan Mitchell Center in New Orleans.
Eligibility & Selection Process
Each spring, we invite a diverse range of artists and arts professionals to nominate artists who:

• Are making important contributions to artistic and cultural discourse
• Are deserving of greater national recognition
• Would find the Fellowship to be meaningful and impactful on their lives and careers

The Foundation is committed to acknowledging artists who reflect the diverse world in which we live, and actively encourages nominators and jurors to put forward artists of color and indigenous artists; women artists; LGBTQIA+ artists; artists with disabilities; artists who have come to their practice through non-traditional career paths; and artists living outside of city centers.

Eligibility

To be eligible to apply, artists must first be nominated by one of the Foundation’s invited nominators. Nominations are limited to artists who:
Are based in a U.S. state or territoryHave a primary practice rooted in painting or sculptureAre not enrolled in an arts degree program at the time of nomination or award acceptance

Ineligibility

Given that the Fellowship is an expansion of the Painters & Sculptors Grants (awarded 1994–2020), previous recipients of that grant are not eligible for the Fellowship. Artist duos or collectives are also not eligible.