Project grants for events, exhibitions, and performances are awarded in amounts up to $300,000, with additional unrestricted funds added for general operating costs, and support exceptional cultural programs and experiences presented by Philadelphia-area artists and organizations, for a wide range of audiences.
African American Museum in Philadelphia
AAMP Residency for Art and Social Change
A pilot artist residency program for emerging black artists engages with the Olney neighborhood of North Philadelphia and responds to current social issues through the interpretation of AAMP’s collections.
Ars Nova Workshop
Lovers (for Philadelphia)
Composer and guitarist Nels Cline curates a concert experience inspired by Philadelphia’s rich musical history and Cline’s acclaimed concept recording, Lovers, performed by a specially assembled jazz orchestra.
Asian Arts Initiative
(ex)CHANGE: History Place Presence
Six temporary public artworks across Philadelphia, created by a multidisciplinary group of Asian American artists, reflect on the city’s diverse narratives and changing neighborhoods.
Madhusmita Bora
Threads of History: Resurrection of a Textile
Classical Indian dance, performed by the Dancing Monks of Assam, brings to life the stories embedded in an ancient textile from the collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
Bowerbird
Sound Material: Kagel's Zwei Mann Orchester
The US premiere of a large-scale sound sculpture, conceived by late composer and artist Mauricio Kagel, explores the interplay between sound and object, performance and sculpture.
Bryn Mawr College
Gardens Speak and other works by Tania El Khoury
The immersive installation work of Lebanese artist Tania El Khoury is highlighted in a multi-part performance project that shares the narratives of Syrian citizens and refugees and addresses displacement, oppression, and justice.
The Clay Studio
Making Place Matter
In conjunction with its relocation to South Kensington, The Clay Studio’s collaboration with area community members generates an inaugural exhibition plan focused on the theme of place.
Christ Church Preservation Trust
Inaugural Commission for the Christ Church Organ (working title)
A new composition by Nathan Davis and Phyllis Chen, performed by the highly acclaimed International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), activates Christ Church’s historic campus and celebrates the installation of a new custom-built pipe organ.
The Crossing
Aniara
The Crossing choir and Finnish theater company Klockriketeatern collaborate to produce the world premiere of a hybrid choral-theater work, composed by Guggenheim and Pew Fellow Robert Maggio.
Drexel University Westphal College
Philadelphia Museum of Dance
A large-scale performance event on the grounds of The Barnes Foundation, co-curated by acclaimed French choreographer Boris Charmatz, examines the presentation of public performance in relationship to the exhibition of visual art objects.
Eastern State Penitentiary
Hidden Lives, Illuminated
Stories from inside America’s correctional system are brought to light through four newly commissioned, animated short films, projected onto Eastern State Penitentiary’s 30-foot facade.
The Franklin Institute
Enhancing Views of History: Terracotta Warriors and Augmented Reality
Augmented reality technology brings the burial site of China’s first emperor to life and enhances museum visitors’ understanding of the history and science of ancient artifacts.
FringeArts
Heiner Goebbels: Imaginary Stages
The Philadelphia premiere of two works by Heiner Goebbels—an internationally acclaimed German composer and director—merges theater, performative installation, and experimental chamber music.
Historical Society of Pennsylvania
Audience Embedded
Members of Philadelphia’s Puerto Rican community interpret the collections of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania and Taller Puertorriqueño, in order to contribute to the development of new programming centered on the community’s experiences in Philadelphia, past and present.
Elizabeth Huston
KLANG
Pioneering composer Karlheinz Stockhausen’s KLANG is experienced in a daylong series of 21 chamber music compositions, each written to represent an hour of the day.
Independence Seaport Museum
Engaging Contemporary Artists at Independence Seaport Museum
Artist and Pew Fellow Teresa Jaynes leads an inquiry into the potential of a contemporary art-making program to increase audience engagement with the Seaport Museum and deepen the public’s understanding of the region’s waterways.
Institute on Disabilities at Temple University
Discovering the Selinsgrove Center
An artist residency model takes shape in this public history project designed to illuminate the first-person narratives of people with intellectual disabilities and their experiences of institutionalization at Selinsgrove Center in Central Pennsylvania.
Intercultural Journeys
Modupúe | Ibaye: The Philadelphia Yoruba Performance Project
This community history project explores Yoruba performance practices and traditions, originating from West Africa, and their role in shaping Philadelphia’s social and cultural landscape.
John Jarboe
The Poison Cookie Jar
An interactive, web-based mapping project documents the rich history and contemporary practice of cabaret around the world with artist interviews, video, music, and historical texts.
Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts
Taylor Mac: A 24-Decade History of Popular Music
In its Philadelphia premiere, Taylor Mac’s Pulitzer Prize-nominated performance work journeys through 240 years of US history and popular songs, staged in two 12-hour installments.
Kun-Yang Lin/Dancers
Faith Project
A new dance work contemplates the relationship between religious practice and contemporary dance, taking inspiration from exchanges with an interfaith group of community participants.
Trey Lyford
The Accountant
This visual theater work blends vaudeville routines, illusion, origami, and kinetic set elements to tell the story of a life remembered and the frailty of human experience.
Orchestra 2001
Frank Zappa – The Yellow Shark
The Philadelphia premiere of The Yellow Shark celebrates the genre-defying compositional work of maverick American composer and rock guitarist Frank Zappa.
Partners for Sacred Places
Playing and Preserving
This interdisciplinary project builds artistic collaborations and civic energy around Philadelphia’s historic sacred places and their pipe organs.
Pennsylvania Horticultural Society
Farm for the City: Growing for Greater Good
A temporary “farm-as-art installation” transforms center city Philadelphia’s Thomas Paine Plaza into a civic commons for conversations about urban agriculture, food access, and community revitalization.
Philadelphia Folklore Project
Women of New Klezmer
A concert of new klezmer compositions, written and performed by three generations of women, brings contemporary meaning to a traditional, Eastern European, Jewish folk music form.
Philadelphia Museum of Art
Yael Bartana (working title)
A newly commissioned site-specific performance and an exhibition showcase Israeli filmmaker and installation artist Yael Bartana, whose work addresses the complexities of migration, memory, and identity.
Philadelphia Photo Arts Center
The Women's Mobile Museum with Zanele Muholi
South African photographer Zanele Muholi creates a mobile exhibition space and engages with 10 Philadelphia women in telling their own stories through self-portraits and portraits of women in the participants’ lives.
Please Touch Museum
America to Zanzibar: Muslim Cultures Near and Far
This exhibition combines art, technology, performance, and interactive programming to introduce young children and their families to local and global Muslim communities and culture.
jumatatu m. poe
Let 'im Move You: This Is a Formation
A new performance work draws from the J-Sette dance form, examining “team” in performance and exploring the rhythms of pop and club music.
RAIR
Digging Deeper: Field Studies Made Possible by the Waste Stream
What can waste tell us about contemporary urban life? This question guides a cohort of social scientists as they dig into a recycling facility and consider “waste as artifact.”
Kayla Romberger
Publishing As Practice
Three experimental art publishers explore publishing as an incubator for new forms of editorial, curatorial, and artistic practice in a residency program based in Philadelphia’s Ulises bookshop.
Lenny Seidman
ARC
An evening-length performance suite brings together the drumming traditions of tabla from North India and taiko from Japan with contemporary dance and Japanese butoh.
Swarthmore College
Friends, Peace, and Sanctuary
Book artists working with Iraqi and Syrian refugees create artists’ books that amplify personal narratives of displacement, immigration, and sanctuary.
Temple Contemporary
From a Black Son to a White Man to a Black Woman and Back Again
Newly commissioned work by visual artist Trenton Doyle Hancock examines the representation of race in material culture, inspired by toy dolls from the artist’s own collection and from Philadelphia’s African American Doll Museum.
Thomas Jefferson University
Building Empathy Through the Arts
Artists, medical students, and people living with dementia and their caregivers engage in an arts-based process of empathy-building and storytelling that culminates in a performance about what it means to heal and be healed.
University of the Arts
Invisible City: Philadelphia and the Vernacular Avant-garde
Philadelphia’s significant contributions to visual culture in the 1950s through the 1970s are highlighted and explored in an exhibition, a publication, and performances.
Voloshky Ukrainian Dance Ensemble
Crimean Tatar Cultural Recovery
Research into Crimean Tatar choreography through an engagement with indigenous choreographers in Lviv, Ukraine expands the repertoire of this American-Ukrainian dance ensemble.
WXPN, University of Pennsylvania
Saturday Night & Sunday Morning: The Gospel Roots of Rock & Soul
Live performances, a radio documentary series, and a media-rich website explore the roots of gospel and its influence on secular popular music.
