Pollock-Krasner Foundation
/OVERVIEW: The Pollock-Krasner Foundation supports visual artists who are painters, sculptors, and artists who work on and with paper, including printmakers. They fund artists who have worked as professionals over a significant period of time and have a "demonstrable financial need, whether professional, personal or both."
IP TAKE: The Pollock-Krasner Foundation grants are narrow in scope and prioritize painters, sculptors and artists who work on paper. They also only support artists who are fairly established in their field and have an immediate financial need.
PROFILE: The Pollock-Krasner Foundation was created in 1985 by Lee Krasner, abstract expressionist painter and the wife of Jackson Pollock. The foundation seeks to provide “financial assistance to individual working visual artists of established ability.” The Pollock-Krasner grants support painters, sculptors, and visual artists who work on or with paper in some shape or form. They expressly do not fund commercial artists, photographers, video artists, performance artists, filmmakers, crafts-makers, computer artists, or any artist whose work falls into these categories.
Grants typically range from $5,000 to $30,000 and support artists with "recognizable artistic merit" who demonstrate a genuine financial need (not necessarily catastrophic) and have worked in their field for a significant period of time. These are one-year grants to support the creation of new work, purchase needed materials, and pay studio rent, as well as any potential personal and medical expenses. A number of grants are also given to organizations with the same criteria. Most distributed grants are roughly in the $10,000 to $15,000 range.
The foundation also offers Organization Grants, the Lee Krasner Award, and the Pollock Prize for Creativity. However, all of these are by nomination only and are not open to grantseekers.
There are no deadlines for Pollock-Krasner grants and applications are accepted online. Funds are not intended to "pay for past debts, legal fees, the purchase of real estate, moves to other cities, personal travel, or to pay for the costs of installations, commissions or projects ordered by others." All applicants must also be actively exhibiting their current work "in professional artistic venues, such as gallery and museum spaces." Past grant recipients have used their funds to concentrate on studio work, prepare for exhibitions and "other professional opportunities such as accepting a residency."
The foundation awards around 160 grants each year to an international group of visual artists and organizations totaling an average of just over $2 million. Some of the organizations that received support include the International Foundation for Art Research (New York, NY), Sculpture Center (Long Island City, NY), Vermont Studio Center, and the New York Foundation for the Arts. Grant guidelines are available online. Past grantee work can also be seen here.
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