John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation
/OVERVIEW: The John Simon Guggenheim Foundation runs a highly competitive fellowship program for artists, scholars and researchers.
IP TAKE: Prestigious Guggenheim fellowships support acclaimed artists, as well as leading scholars and researchers in the visual arts, performing arts, humanities and social and physical sciences. Many Guggenheim fellows have gone on to win the Nobel Prize, the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, the Fields Medial and to be elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
While funding appears accessible given the self-driven application process, note that the application process is complicated and often elite, which means that recommenders for individual applicant’s must bear credentials fitting with the foundation’s perception of excellence, limited to tenured faculty and renowned artists and writers in their own right who may recommend grantees. Not all grantees have access to this level of field specific support and institutional investment, so it may require networking with the best in your field and familiarizing them with your work in order to secure a recommendation. As well, make sure to edit your application materials several times, since this space is so competitive, thousands apply for only 175 fellowships. This is often a career-making grant, which many academic artists and humanists pursue.
Having suspended its Latin American and Caribbean program, the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation is currently awarding fellowships exclusively to individuals who are citizens or permanent residents of the U.S. or Canada. Of the approximately 175 fellowships awarded each year, the largest portion go to visual and performing artists. A smaller portion of fellowships support researchers in the humanities and social science, with only a handful awarded to researchers in STEM fields. The foundation runs an open application process via its website. Applications are judged by a panel of former fellows in any given field, but award decisions are ultimately made by the foundation’s board of trustees. Students are not eligible to apply.
You can only win Guggenheim support once. Guggenheim Fellowships are not available for the “creation of residencies, curriculum development, or any type of educational program, nor are they available to support the development of websites or blogs.” However, if you haven’t won before, you can apply repeatedly.
Due to the rigor of the application and jurying process, note that this funder is not for early-career creatives and academics, but for those who may already have a book or more developed (or related career development appropriate to individual fields).
PROFILE: Senator Simon Guggenheim and his wife established the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation in New York City in 1925. The foundation honors the memory of the Guggenheims’ eldest son, John Simon, who died in 1922 at the age of 17. Working in the fine and performing arts, as well as the liberal arts and sciences, the foundation awards fellowships “to further the development of scholars and artists by assisting them to engage in research in any field of knowledge and creation in any of the arts, under the freest possible conditions and irrespective of race, color, or creed.”
Guggenheim awards about 175 fellowships each year to “individuals who have already demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the arts,” many of whom go on to win prestigious accolades in their fields including the Nobel Prize, the National Book Award, the Pulitzer Prize, the Fields Medal and induction to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Recent funding has prioritized artists and scholars in fine and performing arts and the humanities, with less than one fourth of its awards supporting research in the social or physical sciences. The foundation recently paused its Latin American and Caribbean fellowship program, limiting its work to the U.S. and Canada. It is important to note that Guggenheim fellowships are awarded to individuals, not organizations or schools, and that students at any level of study are ineligible for funding.
Grants for Visual Arts
A significant portion of Guggenheim fellowships have gone to visual artists in recent years. The foundation does not outline specific areas of interest for its visual arts fellowships but bases its awards on artists’ previous work, intentions and goals for one or more future projects, written recommendations and evaluations of an in-house panel of advisers in the applicant’s field. Artist working in traditional media, multimedia and photography as well as visual arts research and photography studies have received fellowships. The artists Leslie Hewitt won a fellowship in 2020 for her post-minimalist work in the historical still life genre that combines photography and sculpture. Another past grantee, Christopher Wood, is an art historian who has studied German renaissance art, was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2016.
Grants for Music
Guggenheim’s music fellowships support the work of composers in various styles of music, music research, ethnomusicology and sound art. The foundation does not support the work of conductors, musicians or musical performance groups. Recent fellowships have supported the contemporary composers José-Luis Hurtado, Suzanne Farrin, Taylor Brook and Robert Millis. The musicologist Peter Schmelz won a fellowship in 2019 for a monograph on the music of the late U.S.S.R.
Grants for Dance
In the field of dance, Guggenheim mainly supports choreographers and individuals involved in dance research. One past grantee, Ann Cooper Albright, the chair of the dance department at Oberlin College, studies cultural theories of dance and the body. Choreographers who have received recent fellowships include Kimberly Bartosik, Jo Kreiter, Gabriel Lamb, Shamel Pitts and Christopher Rudd.
Grants for Theater
Guggenheim’s theater fellowships support playwrights, performance artists who create original work, dramaturgy and theater or drama research. The foundation does not support actors, directors or theater companies. Recent fellows include the dramaturg and Julliard professor Anne Cattaneo and Guillermo Gómez-Peña, who is the artistic director for the Los Angeles-based performance group La Pocha Nostra.
Grants for Film
A significant number of Guggenheim’s performing arts fellowships have gone to filmmakers, digital media artists and film researchers in recent years. The filmmaker and photographer Sky Hopinka, a 2020 recipient, creates nonfiction films about indigenous language, culture and landscape in the U.S. Another fellow, Patrick Jagoda, is a digital media theorist and alternative reality game designer who conducts research on emergent art forms at the University of Chicago.
Grants for Creative Writing
Writing is one of the Guggenheims largest funding areas, with fellowships supporting writers of fiction, non-fiction, poetry, literary criticism and humanities research in historical and world literatures. It is worth noting that the foundation does not support writing that is intended for children. Nobel Laureates in literature who were Guggenheim fellows include Saul Bellow, Joseph Brodsky, Czeslaw Milosz, Octavio Paz and Derek Walcott. Thirty-five poets laureate have been recipients, including Billy Collins and Charles Wright. Recent recipients include Garth Greenwell, whose book What Belongs to You won the British Book award, and the author Yiyun Lee, who is a professor of creative writing at Princeton.
Grants for Humanities Research
In addition to supporting the work of artists and scholars in the visual and performing arts, Guggenheim fellowships support the work of individuals working in the disciplines of history, religious studies, philosophy, cultural studies, linguistics and translation. Grantees in these areas generally hold faculty positions at leading colleges and universities in the U.S. and Canada. Recent grantees include Mark Philip Bradley, an author and professor of history at the University of Chicago; Sarah Buss, who teaches philosophy at the University of Michigan; and James T. Campbell, a history professor at Stanford University who focuses on slavery and race.
Grants for Science Research
Fellowships for scholars and researchers in the physical sciences account for a small portion of Guggenheim fellowships. In a recent year, only 12 of about 175 fellowships went to individuals working in the fields of physics, biology, medicine, chemistry, mathematics, neuroscience, earth science and computer science. Recipients are generally scientists in leadership or faculty positions at research universities or institutes in the U.S. or Canada. Two recent fellows are Jennifer Doudna, a professor at the University of California at Berkeley who won a Nobel Prize for her work in the field CRISPR gene editing, and Andrew Strominger, the physicist who heads Harvard University’s Center for the Fundamental Laws of Nature.
Other Grantmaking Opportunities:
A significant portion of Guggenheim fellowships support research in the social sciences, including researchers working in the disciplines of anthropology, economics, geography, psychology and sociology. As with the foundation’s other areas of funding, grants tend to support well-established researchers who are affiliated with leading institutions and departments in their fields.
Important Grant Details:
The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation makes over $1 million in fellowships each year. Fellowships range from $10,000 to $100,000, with an average grant size of about $75,000. Recipients tend to be individuals who have been recognized as having made outstanding contributions in their fields. Visual and performing arts is the foundation’s largest area of funding, followed by humanities and social sciences, with physical science fellowships trailing behind those other areas. The foundation recently suspended its Latin American and Caribbean program; funding is currently limited to the U.S. and Canada. For additional information about past fellowships, see the foundation’s fellows database.
Guggenheim runs an open application process for artists, scholars and researchers who are either citizens or permanent residents of the U.S. or Canada. Students are not eligible for fellowships, but members of university faculties may apply. The foundation posts guidelines and links to its application on its website. Applications are generally accepted until mid-September of each year and are reviewed by a panel of former Guggenheim fellows in the applicant’s discipline or related disciplines. A Committee of Selection makes decisions about how many fellowships should be awarded in each area, and the foundation’s Board of Trustees makes final award decisions.
PEOPLE:
Search for staff contact info and bios in PeopleFinder (paid subscribers only).
LINKS:
