Project grants for public events, exhibitions, and performances are awarded in amounts up to $300,000, with an additional percentage for general operating costs. The grants are designed to support exceptional cultural programs and experiences presented by Philadelphia-area artists and organizations, for a wide range of audiences.
Nikki Appino
The White Lama (working title)
A multimedia performance work featuring a new composition by American composer Philip Glass and Tibetan musician Tenzin Choegyal, and performed by actor Kevin Joyce, examines the adventurous life and death of early 20th-century explorer, mystic, and author Theos Bernard.
Ars Nova Workshop
Milford Graves: A Mind-Body Deal
An exhibition and interpretation of Milford Graves’ artistic laboratory as a living, interactive theater shed light on a lifetime of multidisciplinary creative work from this icon of the free jazz movement.
Timothy Belknap
Killjoy’s Kastle
A large-scale, interactive performance in the form of a haunted house at Icebox Project Space, created by artists Allyson Mitchell and Deirdre Logue, engages Philadelphia artists and addresses themes of identity, race, gender, and class.
Beth Sholom Synagogue Preservation Foundation
David Hartt: The Histories (Le Mancenillier)
A site-responsive, multimedia installation by David Hartt activates Beth Sholom Synagogue, offering new ways to experience and interpret the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed National Historic Landmark.
Bowerbird
Maryanne Amacher: Making The Third Ear
The multimedia compositions and visceral, large-scale installations of pioneering sound artist Maryanne Amacher are illuminated through concerts, workshops, and a performance installation.
Charles L. Blockson Afro-American Collection, Temple University
Black Lives Have Always Mattered: Hidden African American Philadelphia of the Twentieth Century
A new graphic novel depicts underrepresented stories of talent, courage, and achievement from 20th-century African American Philadelphians and encourages conversations about race in America.
The College of Physicians/Mütter Museum
Spit Spreads Death: The Influenza Pandemic of 1918–19 in Philadelphia
An interactive exhibition at the Mütter Museum about the 1918–19 influenza pandemic in Philadelphia explores connections between civic responsibility and public health.
The Fabric Workshop and Museum
Art in Process
A discovery project investigates best practices in sharing the process of art-making to create meaningful connections between contemporary art and audiences.
Fairmount Park Conservancy
In Motion, In Place: Trisha Brown Dance Company in Fairmount Park
Audiences experience Philadelphia’s Fairmount Park in new ways as a series of site-responsive, outdoor performances present the works of pioneering post-modern choreographer Trisha Brown.
Institute of Contemporary Art
Colored People Time: Mundane Futures, Quotidian Pasts, and Banal Presents
The history, present, and future of blackness in America is examined in a three-part, multidisciplinary exhibition featuring the work of artists Carolyn Lazard, Cameron Rowland, Sable Elyse Smith, and Martine Syms.
Jazz Bridge
Documenting & Interpreting the Philly Jazz Legacy
A discovery process brings together the region’s three major jazz organizations—Jazz Bridge, Philadelphia Jazz Project, and Philadelphia Clef Club—to explore how to meaningfully preserve, interpret, and share Philadelphia’s expansive jazz history.
Kulu Mele African Dance & Drum Ensemble
Ogun & the People
Through movement and music, a new interpretation of a traditional Afro-Cuban Yoruba parable takes shape, under the direction of Dorothy Wilkie, and during a company residency with the Cuban performance troupe Ballet Folklórico Cutumba.
The Library Company of Philadelphia
Redrawing History: Indigenous Perspectives on Colonial America
An exhibition and a newly commissioned graphic novel by Native American artists—illustrator Weshoyot Alvitre and writer Lee Francis—re-contextualize 18th-century historic events from the perspective of indigenous communities.
Lightbox Film Center at International House Philadelphia
Dream Dance: The Art of Ed Emshwiller
A retrospective surveys Ed Emshwiller’s expansive career in film, video, and visual art, introducing the artist’s groundbreaking work to a new generation of audiences.
Mann Center for the Performing Arts
The Deep Blue Sea
A newly commissioned work from the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company explores the relationship between the individual and the larger community and brings 100 professional and local amateur performers to the Mann’s outdoor stage.
Tiona Nekkia McClodden
Be Alarmed: The Black Americana Epic, Movement III - The Triple Deities
A multimedia performance merges art song, exhibition, film, and sculpture to examine black female identity, drawing from the work of poet Langston Hughes and composer Florence B. Price.
Diane Monroe
Violin Woman, African Dreams
An evening-length suite composed by Diane Monroe for violin, string quartet, West African kora, and percussion draws inspiration from The Colored Girls Museum, a singular house museum located in Philadelphia’s Germantown neighborhood.
National Constitution Center
Reconstruction and the Fourteenth Amendment Project
An original theater work sheds new light on the Reconstruction era in the United States, the constitutional legacy of the Civil War, and the passage of the Fourteenth Amendment.
Partners for Sacred Places
Grounds That Shout! (And Others Merely Shaking)
A series of performances curated by award-winning choreographer Reggie Wilson explores the African American religious experience and Philadelphia’s historic religious sites, in a collaboration between Partners for Sacred Places and Philadelphia Contemporary.
PennDesign, University of Pennsylvania
Design With Nature Now
Three parallel exhibitions highlight dynamic and visionary approaches to landscape design and development in the face of climate change and urbanization.
Philadelphia Area Consortium of Special Collections Libraries
Chronicling Resistance, Enabling Resistance
A discovery process explores new methods for telling the stories of Philadelphia’s rich heritage of resistance by broadening accessibility to little-known documents held in the collections of 38 member libraries.
Philadelphia Chamber Music Society
Emerging Voices: Art Song and Social Connection
A concert series curated in collaboration with tenor vocalist Nicholas Phan illuminates the evolution of art song and how the form, with its intersection of poetry and music, remains a powerful vehicle for social exchange.
Philadelphia Dance Projects
Old City Arts History Project
A discovery project investigates the arts in relationship to place and aims to capture the legacy and influence of artists working in Old City, Philadelphia, in the mid-1970s and ‘80s.
Pig Iron Theatre Company
SUPERTERRANEAN (working title)
The world premiere of a design-driven theater work, created in collaboration with MacArthur Fellow and Tony Award-winner Mimi Lien, considers how underground architecture, built environments, and hidden networks influence human behavior.
Odean Pope
Sounds of the Circle
A new evening-length suite by master jazz musician Odean Pope evokes the “distinctive sonic environment” of North Philadelphia and the mid-20th-century innovators who helped build Philadelphia’s jazz legacy.
Presbyterian Historical Society
Building Knowledge and Breaking Barriers: Archives-Based Learning
Collaborative research projects introduce Community College of Philadelphia students to rare historical materials, leading to exhibitions that examine the notion of accessibility and representation in archives.
PRISM Quartet
Mending Wall
Composers Martin Bresnick, George Lewis, Arturo O’Farrill, and Juri Seo create new works exploring the metaphorical meaning of walls in contemporary society, performed by PRISM Quartet.
South Asian American Digital Archive
Revolution Remix: A South Asian American Sound Tour of Historic Philadelphia
New musical compositions by Zain Alam, Rudresh Mahanthappa, and Rupa Marya enrich a walking tour that explores historic Philadelphia through the lens of South Asian American history.
Stenton
Inequality in Bronze: Monumental Plantation Legacies
A community-driven process commissions a memorial recognizing Dinah, an enslaved woman who lived at Stenton, and addresses the role historic sites can play in the national conversation about present-day monuments.
Temple Contemporary
1000 Ways to Listen
A multi-year performance project brings together Philadelphians to ask each other the question, “Are we listening?”
University of the Arts School of Dance
The School for Temporary Liveness
An eight-day pop-up performance experience, presented in the format of a school that occupies the Philadelphia Art Alliance building, features artists Nora Chipaumire and Isabel Lewis and generates new forms of spectatorship and participation.
University of Pennsylvania Libraries
Whitman at 200: Art and Democracy
Cultural events across the region mark Walt Whitman’s 200th birthday with exhibitions, a tribute performance by singer-songwriter and poet Patti Smith, and four newly commissioned works by artists Carolyn Healy and John Phillips, The Bearded Ladies Cabaret, Homer Jackson, and Spencer Finch.
The Wilma Theater
THERE
An ensemble-devised work, led by Blanka Zizka, adapts Lebanese American poet Etel Adnan’s book-length poem There: In the Light and the Darkness of the Self and of the Other and contemplates existential questions of personal and community identity and conflict, in an environment created by Berlin-based artist Rosa Barba.
