25th Anniversary Impact Report | Creative Capital

Who We Are

MISSION

Creative Capital uplifts individual artists with unrestricted project grants, professional development, and community-building services to advance freedom of expression and foster sustainable careers.

FIELDS WE FUND

Creative Capital funds the creation of new artistic works in the visual arts (painting/drawing, sculpture, installation, public art, architecture, video art, time-based art), performing arts (dance, theater, music/jazz), film, literature (poetry, fiction, nonfiction), technology, multidisciplinary, and socially engaged practices.

ORIGINS

In 1999, Creative Capital Foundation was established as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit public charity by the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts after the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) ended the majority of its grants for individual artists. We believe that fostering artistic freedom of expression is critical to democracy.

Reflecting on 25 Years of Artist Support

Dear Artists, Friends, and Supporters,

Thanks to all of your love and commitment to artists, Creative Capital celebrated important milestones this year—25 years of championing artistic freedom, $55 million fundraised and awarded in grants and services, and 1,000 Creative Capital Awardees!

Founded in 1999, after the National Endowment for the Arts discontinued the majority of its grants for individual artists, Creative Capital today remains resolutely on the front lines of defending freedom of thought and freedom of expression. Our broad-based, open call grant program continues to provide a vital channel for new artistic ideas to be identified and supported across the entire American landscape.

In Fiscal Year 2025, Creative Capital fundraised and provided $2.55 million in grant funding to 176 artists across 31 states in 85 cities, including Albuquerque, Flint, Honolulu, Salt Lake City, Tulsa, and Waban.

Janelle VanderKelen (2025 Creative Capital Awardee, Film): The Golden Thread, 2027. Still from 16mm film transferred to video + sound. Photographer: Janelle VanderKelen

In addition, 31 extraordinary new works came to life this year through the Creative Capital Project Premieres of Awardees: Carmelita Tropicana and Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, Give Me Carmelita Tropicana, Soho Rep, New York, NY; Paola Prestini, Sensorium Ex, Common Senses Festival, Omaha, NE; Pioneer Winter, Apollo, Miami Theater Center, Miami, FL; Wafaa Bilal, In a Grain of Wheat: Cultivating Hybrid Futures in Ancient Seed DNA, MCA Chicago, Chicago, IL; Joe Whittle, Landback: The Return of All Federal Lands to Native Americans, TIME; and Sherrill Roland, The Jumpsuit Project(s), UNC Greensboro, Greensboro, NC.

As we approach the 250th anniversary of the founding of our democracy, Creative Capital’s mission to champion artistic freedom by funding individual artists creating innovative new works has never been more grassroots, more potent, or more relevant. Each year, thousands of artists need funding to realize

their bold new visions, yet arts funding has become increasingly difficult to access. To address this unmet need, Creative Capital has expanded its grant program and launched the new State of the Art Prize, a $10,000 unrestricted grant to one artist in all 50 states and territories.

The Creative Capital Artist Lab, online professional development courses, is free-of-charge to individual artists and has now served more than 30,000 artists in rural, regional, and urban areas across the country and beyond. Most exciting of all, our community has never been stronger with hundreds of artists, industry experts, and guests attending our 2025 Creative Capital Carnival at Lincoln Center and our most successful fundraiser in history—25th Anniversary 1,000 Artists Benefit + Banquet.

Now is the time when we need to invest in artists who chart new waters, challenge conventions, and invite new ways of seeing. We are excited to imagine the next era of artist support with you!

Christine Kuan President & Executive Director

A Letter from the Board Chair

Since 1999, Creative Capital—and the artists and communities you’ve supported—has shown how risk-taking art can change lives, shift culture, and build new public imaginaries. The last 25 years are a mosaic of experiments, resilience, and tangible impact: projects that opened conversations, practices that supported our at-risk communities, grants that allowed artists time to complete their work, networks that seeded new institutions, and, frankly, some exciting art of all genres. These aren’t just creative wins; they’re social and civic gains, expanded public access to ideas, stronger local cultural economies, and resources for artists to push boundaries that strengthen our nation.

What stands out from those 25 years

Experiment as engine: Funding truly experimental work produced outsized cultural return—new forms, cross-disciplinary practices, and models now taken up by museums, festivals, and communities.

Artists’ economic dignity: Grant support turned precarious practice into viable careers for hundreds of artists. This created ripple effects in neighborhoods and local economies.

Community stewardship: Projects rooted in preserving customs, memory, and craft, as well as creating civic platforms for all communities.

Network effects: Small investments in bold projects led to collaborations, new institutions, and policy attention that multiplied impact far beyond the initial grant.

Learning culture: Embracing iteration, failure, and rigorous critique became integral to the artist’s process. Creative Capital understood how to fund responsibly and invest in what truly matters, aiming for visionary results.

Looking ahead: a bold, measurable 25-year vision of impact

Art will become even more central in shaping solutions to complex challenges—such as climate change, immigration, social justice, civic division, and responses to public policy—allowing us to develop more effective and impactful results. We are a nation that embraces risk-taking, with no limit to the rewards it can bring. Artists serve as examiners, documenters, and innovators of what makes our nation unparalleled. Your partnership will support Creative Capital’s essential work and help it grow into new areas that need attention and funding.

Reinvestment in areas of our creative ecosystem in need due to policy changes: Creative Capital has the infrastructure and scale to reallocate funds to specific areas, supported by governance structures and professional standards. With your partnership, Creative Capital can effectively deploy capital that reinvigorates.

Professional education without borders. Our Artist Lab infrastructure is built on the foundation of what we have done well for 25 years, establishing Creative Capital as the industry standard for strengthening artists’ practices through education and collaboration. Artist Lab can expand its reach across the Americas and beyond, making it available in multiple languages and without borders.

Scale grants and awards. Our advanced prize program establishes the foundation for increasing grants and direct support to artists nationwide. We have the infrastructure for growth and the vision to expand into new grant areas. We are always open to innovative ideas that create change or impact, and our awards segment can grow through new partnerships.

Supporting artists strengthens community bonds, creates economic opportunities, preserves cultural heritage, and fosters public dialogue essential for resilient democracies. Investing in artists is an investment in safer, healthier, and more unified communities. Creative Capital is committed to demonstrating the value of partnerships and providing a transparent method for assessing its impact. I sincerely thank you for your support and extend my gratitude to everyone involved with Creative Capital, including staff, board members, advisory committee members, and all our past and current financial supporters; without you, we would not be Creative Capital.

With sincere gratitude,

Reginald M. Browne Board Chair

25 Years of Impact

In grants and services to artists since 1999 $55m

Over the past 25 years, Creative Capital has fundraised to provide $55 million in critical grants and services to 1,010 artists creating new work across disciplines. Today, Creative Capital remains unwavering in its commitment to champion freedom of expression by uplifting artists of all backgrounds across the entire landscape of America through its open call, national grant program and artist services.

833 1,010

ARTISTS GRANTED AS OF 2025

PROJECTS FUNDED AS OF 2025

Nona Hendryx ‘The Afro-Future Queen’ and her guests from another universe, The Illustrious Blacks, give an out-of-this-world performance of “Universal Truth” at Creative Capital's 25th Anniversary Benefit and Banquet.

The Creative Capital 25th Anniversary 1,000 Artists Benefit + Banquet on October 20, 2025 at The Pool, Seagram Building, New York City, was a magical evening of milestones celebrating 25 years of championing artistic freedom, $55 million fundraised and awarded in grants and services, and 1,000 Creative Capital Awardees!

25th Anniversary Gala

Beloved artists, friends, and supporters traveled far and wide from Hawaii to Colorado to Massachusetts to honor fearless visionaries in the arts: Jeffrey Gibson (2005 Creative Capital Awardee), Nona Hendryx (2024 Creative Capital Awardee), Colleen Jennings-Roggensack, and Stephen Reily

Raúl O. Paz-Pastrana’s (2022 Creative Capital Awardee) Creative Capital project Backside (2025) premiered at the 2025 Tribeca Film Festival. The film offers an intimate glimpse into the lives of immigrant workers who work year-round caring for some of the world’s most prized racehorses.

2025 Artist Impact

$2.55m

FUNDING DISBURSED TO ARTISTS IN FY25

176 85

ARTISTS WHO RECEIVED FUNDING IN FY25

280,000

TOTAL SERVED VIA ARTIST OPPORTUNITIES

CITIES ACROSS 31 STATES WHERE GRANT FUNDING WAS DISBURSED IN FY25

30,000

ARTISTS IN 91 COUNTRIES SERVED VIA CREATIVE CAPITAL CURRICULUM TO DATE

55

NEW CREATIVE CAPITAL AWARDEES

RAÚL O. PAZ-PASTRANA, 2022 CREATIVE CAPITAL AWARDEE IN FILM

“ The impact of Creative Capital’s support has been truly invaluable. It has enabled us to keep the film moving forward while we continue building partnerships. It gave me the freedom to take creative risks with the narrative—and ultimately, to finish the film!”

2025 Creative Capital Awardees

ANGELA MATTOX, DIRECTOR OF ARTIST INITIATIVES

“From a landscape opera that tells ancestral stories of environment in the Jurassic canyons of southern Colorado, to a project that transforms a Louisiana plantation into a site of reckoning, these visionary projects are boldly pushing form and ideas forward.”

Visual Arts

CHRISTINE WONG YAP

Daly City, CA

Bay Windows / Ventanas en saliente / 窗花

A trilingual social practice project engaging working-class, immigrant women to collaboratively develop Mexican and Chinese paper cuts and public art to foster cross-cultural bridging.

ILANA SAVDIE

Brooklyn, NY

Festejeros

A series of new paintings and video work which examine the role of theatricality in the rise of power regimes and resistance movements.

JARED OWENS

New York, NY

Remembering Attica: the optics of uprising

A series of new works using visual research and interviews to pay respect to the landmark uprising at Attica Correctional Facility and raise awareness of the ongoing issues of prison overcrowding and prison reform.

JEN DE LOS REYES

OSCAR RENE CORNEJO

Ithaca, NY LAND

LAND combines histories of artists’ engagement with land-based practices and techniques with environmental regeneration and conservation to cultivate sustainable futures.

JEREMY TOUSSAINT-BAPTISTE

Richmond, VA

There, Eyes Were Watching

A “monument by subtraction” that transforms a historic Louisiana home into a site for reckoning with the history (and shaping the future) of the land.

JULIA PHILLIPS

Chicago, IL

Pentasomnia

A 5-channel installation consisting of black and white videos derived from dreams and other associations that take place in a factory, a beach, Hopper’s Nighthawks diner, an institution, and a tunnel.

KAMERON NEAL

Brooklyn, NY

What Year Is It?

A video installation about how we talk about time on the internet, as the internet itself warps our perceptions of time.

KATHY AOKI

Santa Clara, CA

Koons Ruins Atlas

Koons Ruins Atlas satirically documents a fictional vendetta against Jeff Koons’ art by a collector bent on acquiring and destroying his works on her estate.

KATIE GRINNAN

Los Angeles, CA

The Vault

A video/3D simulation, occurring in an economic ruin, that reconsiders systems of valuation, preservation, and cohabitation within the backdrop of extreme climate and weather conditions.

LEE PIVNIK

Miami, FL

The Living Room: A Symbiotic Home

A speculative retrofit of a South-Beach studio apartment into an inhabitable aquaponics sculpture.

SAMANTHA NYE

Philadelphia, PA

Possible Pleasures

A series of video installations that reimagine musical Scopitone films from the 1960s as celebrations of intergenerational queer pleasure.

STEVE PARKER

Austin, TX

HOUSTON IS SINKING

A series of interactive sculptures, made from defunct nautical tools, that sonify land loss in Houston, Texas—one of the fastest sinking cities on earth.

SUSAN CHEN

Long Island City, NY

Chinatown Girl Scouts: Past & Present

A series celebrating Chinatown Girl Scout’s 100-year history through community portraiture in oil paint.

VISHAL JUGDEO

Los Angeles, CA

Hurl a Rock, Feel a Flame

A collectively authored, experimental video made with members of the queer and trans community in Georgetown, Guyana; and an online archive with resources for the community.

Film

AMBER BEMAK

Dallas, TX

Cosmic Moose and Grizzly Bears Ville

Peter Valentine, diagnosed schizophrenic and living unmedicated, fought MIT for 7 years while they demolished his neighborhood to develop University Park, claiming he couldn't leave because it was his electromagnetic laboratory.

ANGELO MADSEN

Burlington, VT OUT OF ME INTO YOU

This project documents the ecosystems the emerge as a result of symbiotic human-to-animal encounters. Shaped by fantasy, these alchemical exchanges are latent with erotic potential.

ASH

GOH HUA

Brooklyn, NY

Confinement (坐月)

Jing returns to Singapore following the birth of her niece and in trying to be an aunt, is forced to confront the causes of her departure a decade prior—her family.

CLYDE PETERSEN

Anacortes, WA

Our Forbidden Country

Our Forbidden Country is a 70-minute, stop-motion animated, narrative feature film centering transmasculine identity, community, desire and fantasy.

DAROL OLU KAE

Los Angeles, CA Without a Song

An aging musician reluctantly returns home after a decades-long absence and struggles to repair old friendships while suffering from a mysterious illness that makes it impossible to play his instrument.

DOLISSA MEDINA

Brownsville, TX

A Light for Ambiguous Loss

An experimental documentary about “Ambiguous Loss,” grief in suspension, explored through the nascent field of Forensic Macrophotography, which resurrects lost fingerprints of the anonymous dead.

EMILY MKRTICHIAN

Salt Lake City, UT

KAMEE ABRAHAMIAN

Demorestville, ON, Canada

Portals

A collaborative media arts anthology that imagines and gathers the bio-mythographies of new mothers and caregivers in a multiversal, fragmented storyworld.

JANELLE VANDERKELEN

Knoxville, TN

The Golden Thread

Inspired by the philosophies and visions of Hildegard of Bingen, this experimental feature film employs stop-motion and time-lapse animation to examine ways fungi mitigate the effects of climate change.

JUAN PABLO GONZÁLEZ

Glendale, CA

The Measure of Time

In a Mexican farming village, two brothers reunite after twenty years. Will their fraternal love heal the scars of such prolonged distancing?

LORI FELKER

Chicago, IL Patient

A feature film telling the story of a medical actor who must shift from helping student doctors practice bedside manner to being a real patient with a mysterious brain abnormality.

SOPHIA NAHLI ALLISON

Los Angeles, CA

Prologue

A cinematic dreamscape awakens an intimate encounter between two Black women over a century ago. But as truth and fiction begin to blur, a complex living, breathing archive is revealed.

TSHAY

Philadelphia, PA

Tell Me When You Get Home.

During a family party, 15 year-old Honest Cardamom encounters the spirit of a lost loved one, reconnecting the teen to her own origin story.

Technology

ALICE BUCKNELL

Los Angeles, CA

Earth Engine

A video game using real-time climate data integration to explore the limits of climate prediction technologies through an inverted game mechanic where the planet is the player.

MOREHSHIN ALLAHYARI

Berkeley, CA

The Remaining Signs of Future Centuries /

A multifaceted project that explores the underrepresented history of Islamicate science, technology, and mysticism through an antiimperialist feminist lens.

SHAYLA BLATCHFORD

Santa Fe, NM

Anti-Uranium Mapping Project

An interactive counter mapping website that serves as an educational database to amplify communities on the Navajo Nation impacted by uranium mining through a multimodal learning experience.

AARON ROBERTSON

Brooklyn, NY

A Separate Rite

In 1980s Detroit, a Black priest fights to revive his dwindling congregation and stop inner-city church closures following the miraculous discovery of two missing children.

DIVYA VICTOR

East Lansing, MI

Kin

Essays that explore under-recognized experiences of ecstasy, agony, and frisson as kinship catalysts in the South Asian diaspora through visual arts, film, architecture, and poetry.

HARMONY HOLIDAY

Los Angeles, CA

After the End of the World

An improvised record of events that surround black music and performance that is most attentive to those events that occur backstage and on the margins that we are asked to forget or overlook.

JONAH MIXON-WEBSTER

Flint, MI

The Hauntology of Slavery

A work of literary non-fiction that combines personal narrative, photography, and archival research to deconstruct the aftereffects of slavery on African American lives.

New Orleans, LA

NOWHERELAND

A work of graphic nonfiction sharing the experiences of Asian Americans caught in the immigrant detention and deportation system in the United States.

Performing Arts

APARNA RAMASWAMY

La Canada, CA

ASHWINI RAMASWAMY

Minneapolis, MN

RANEE RAMASWAMY

Minneapolis, MN

The Liminal Museum

An installation/dance/performance that layers gender, family, lineage, and aging through the life story and collected mementos of the artists’ late mother/grandmother.

ASH FURE

Brooklyn, NY

ANIMAL [the underground]

ANIMAL reimagines opera as sonic training ground: a visceral field of full-bodied sound that activates our animal capacity to sense.

DAHLAK BRATHWAITE

Brooklyn, NY

CHRISTOPHER MARIANETTI

Jackson Heights, NY

COMMERCIAL

A multimedia, music-driven play inspired by playwright Dahlak Brathwaite’s personal connection and history with the cop who killed an unarmed Black man named Stephon Clark in 2018.

DAMON LOCKS

Chicago, IL

Live From CPS

A new production for the Chicago music group Black Monument Ensemble, encapsulating performances, workshops, and curriculum rooted in Chicago public schools.

HOLLAND ANDREWS

YUNIYA EDI KWON

Brooklyn, NY

How does it feel to look at nothing

An embodied affirmation of trans futures amidst the disintegrative reality of trans life, How does it feel to look at nothing is an experimental opera and pre-origin story of a Deity of Namelessness.

KATE LADENHEIM

Los Angeles, CA

Gestural Publics

A dance performance and a digital motion archive that interrogates issues of identity, agency, and conformity in motion capture technology.

LEILEHUA LANZILOTTI

Honolulu, HI

Dance Suite from Lili'u

Dance Suite from Lili'u draws its music and inspiration from the experimental opera project, Lili'u, by Leilehua Lanzilotti connecting performance, community activations, and indigenous language revitalization.

MARIKE SPLINT

Los Angeles, CA

SHOW FULL HISTORY

Using Marike Splint's own internet search history as a performance script, SHOW FULL HISTORY takes audiences on a virtual odyssey, tracing her family's history of migration.

PAOLA PRESTINI

Brooklyn, NY

Sensorium Ex

A new opera synthesizing artificial intelligence, disability, and the arts, pushing boundaries of what it means to have a voice, and paving the way for future artists with disabilities.

RASHAAD NEWSOME

Oakland, CA

I Come As One, But I Stand As One Thousand

In a cybernetic bejeweled landscape, artificial intelligence takes physical form through the choreography of 1000 quadcopter drones with LEDs, accompanied by live performers and an orchestra.

SISTER SYLVESTER

New York, NY

Ghost Genes

An exploration of the hidden histories and the ghosts that haunt genetics and synthetic biology.

SUSIE IBARRA

Berlin, Germany

CHAN

A landscape opera/sound installation of ancestral stories sung and played in resonant jurassic canyons, rivers, & cisterns in Southern Colorado created by Susie Ibarra and produced by The Tank.

TAKAHIRO YAMAMOTO

Portland, OR

Hollow Center

A film, dance, and a book that interiorly explore the membrane between erasure and existence as a place of refuge from the accomplishment society and continuous hostility against immigrants.

THANA ALEXA

Jackson Heights, NY

Resonance

A song cycle that explores how the reverberation of sound frequencies can awaken emotional states, trigger physiological reactions on a molecular level and affect mental health.

ZANE RODULFO

New York, NY SHOUTER!

A multimedia project exploring Black Spirituality and survival through the lens of Trinidad & Tobago’s Shouter Baptist religion & the Gullah Geechee Ring Shout tradition.

Project Premieres

Advancing art, culture, and society

RAÚL O. PAZ-PASTRANA 2022 Awardee

Backside

Tribeca Film Festival, New York, NY

June 7–14, 2025

A feature documentary film that captures the daily work, friendship, dreams, and expertise of the underrecognized migrant workers behind the Kentucky Derby. Following a racing season from beginning to end, this observational film reveals the web of class, labor, and wealth in the American South.

PAOLA PRESTINI 2025 Awardee

Sensorium Ex

Common Senses Festival, Omaha, NE

May 22–25, 2025

An ambitious new opera that synthesizes artificial intelligence, disability, and the arts in a groundbreaking and innovative artistic work.

MARCIA DOUGLAS 2020 Awardee

TheJamaicaKollectionoftheShanteDreamArkive:beingdreamity, algoriddims,chants&riffs

Published by New Directions, Book launch at Center for Fiction

New York, NY

May 7, 2025

Exploring themes of African diasporic fugitivity and migration, this project layers fiction, poem essays, memoir, visual and material documents, and voicescapes—altering and inscribing, in an effort to excavate and rechart history.

PIONEER WINTER 2022 Awardee

Apollo

Miami Theater Center, Miami, FL

April 25–26, 2025

Mythology, HIV/AIDS, personal history, and lineage unfold as a younger queer dancer unites with three elders, each a former incarnation of Apollo, revealing echoes of identity across time and space.

AARON LANDSMAN 2023 Awardee

NightKeeper

The Chocolate Factory & Collapsable Hole, New York, NY

April 13 & April 27, 2025

A two-part experimental album, unfolding as a series of sonic vignettes, dreamt portraits of lives suspended between night and waking.

JOAN OSATO AND SUNHUI CHANG 2023 Awardees

theboiling

The Magic Theater, San Francisco, CA

April 2–20, 2025

The story of a Korean American adoptee virologist from the Midwest and a Black woman and former homicide detective who are paired up to chase down a nihilistic carrier of a deadly virus.

KARTHIK PANDIAN 2022 Awardee

Surrendur

Midway Contemporary Art, Minneapolis, MN

March 15–June 10, 2025

A collaborative exhibition and a ‘machine for homecoming,’ this new work intends to help seed the spiritual ground for Land Back on Turtle Island.

MAKINI 2020 Awardee

TERRESTRIAL:TheSprout

New York Live Arts, New York, NY

March 13–15, 2025

A solo dance performed by Germaine Ingram, The Sprout wonders about the legacy of a single human lifetime as it relates to the broader expanse of a planet’s geological history.

JOE WHITTLE 2023 Awardee

Landback: The Return Of All Federal Lands to Native Americans

TIME article

Published March 6, 2025

A multimedia storytelling project focused on the idea of landback and the Project Drawdown solution Indigenous Peoples’ Forest Tenure, which has been estimated to have the capacity to reduce over 12 gigatons of carbon-dioxide emissions by returning land tenure to Indigenous communities.

AVRAM FINKELSTEIN 2024 Awardee

SomethingTerribleHasHappened(CorpusFluxus)

Smack Mellon, New York, NY

February 22–April 20, 2025

A series of experiments redefining the legibility of corporeal representation within a digital image culture as alternately mutable or fixed.

Joe Whittle (2023 Creative Capital Awardee, Literature). Whittle's Creative Capital project culminated in the TIME article, "The Case for Returning U.S. Public Lands to Indigenous People," on March 6, 2025. Image: Nez Perce tribal members prepare for a ceremony on July 29, 2021 to commemorate the purchase of land that was taken from them in violation of the Treaty of 1855. Photo by Joe Whittle.

AMITIS MOTEVALLI 2020 Awardee

Golestan Revisited

Online archive

February 14, 2025

An online database created to research, reclaim, and rename roses transplanted to Europe during the Crusades from the South and West Asian and North African region, to symbolize and commemorate women, girls, and femmes killed—often while captive in the wars against “terror”.

WAFAA BILAL 2021 Awardee

InaGrainofWheat:CultivatingHybridFuturesinAncientSeedDNA

MCA Chicago, Chicago, IL

February 1–October 19, 2025

A bio-art project using leading-edge molecular biological archiving processes—consciously engaging across cultures while highlighting the negative global implications of consumption, exploitation, and profiteering.

ALLISON JANAE HAMILTON 2019 Awardee

Celestine

Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York, NY

January 30–March 8, 2025

Within a suite of paintings and a trancelike, time-lapse film, Hamilton reinterprets the evocative visual motifs found throughout her practice, building upon her ever-evolving examination of place— and the untold stories of those places.

SHERRILL ROLAND 2021 Awardee

TheJumpsuitProject(s)

UNC Greensboro, Greensboro, North Carolina

January 27–March 17, 2025

A series of collaborative, cross-disciplinary exhibitions across North Carolina that highlight the materiality of the carceral space.

AMERICAN ARTIST 2022 Awardee

ShaperofGod

Pioneer Works, New York, NY

January 24–April 13, 2025

A sculpture and video installation that connects the life and work of Octavia E. Butler to the migration of Black Americans to California, the epicenter of the science fiction movement, and the rocket science industry local to Altadena where Butler and American Artist were born and raised.

MICHAEL PREMO 2019 Awardee

Homegrown

DCTV Firehouse Cinema, New York, NY

December 6–12, 2025

An unflinching chronicle of Americans at war with each other, and a chilling portrait of a growing movement pushing American democracy to the brink.

ETHAN LIPTON 2023 Awardee

We Are Your Robots

Polonsky Shakespeare Center, New York, NY

November 7–December 8, 2024

A live performance exploring brain mapping, violence, caretaking, sex, and many other issues related to artificial intelligence, robotics, and humanity—and ultimately, the question: “What do humans want for themselves?”

VICTOR PAYAN 2019 Awardee

Dreamocracy in America

Jaime’s Place

Nov 1, 2024

A time-travelling, transdisciplinary tour of America examining immigrant and refugee detention centers, Native reservations, and communities west of the 1831 US border—activating voters across the nation with the video game VOTOS LOCOS and a conversation series with leading artists and activists.

PAPEL

MACHETE 2020 Awardee

On the Eve of Abolition

Arts Emerson, Boston, MA

October 31, 2024–Nov 1, 2024

A bilingual play in Spanish and English that tells the speculative fiction story of the last prison in the U.S., using letters from incarcerated people, prison radio shows, puppets, masks, music, and picture storytelling.

JESSE KRIMES 2020 Awardee

Corrections

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY

October 28, 2024–July 13, 2025

Image-based installations presented alongside nineteenth-century photographs from The Met collection by the French criminologist Alphonse Bertillon, raising questions about the perceived neutrality of our systems of identification and the hierarchies of social imbalance they create and reinscribe.

CRYSTAL Z CAMPBELL 2022 Awardee

Currents 124

St. Louis Art Museum, St. Louis, MO

October 25, 2024–March 9, 2025

A project interrogating histories of colonialism, colonial exploitation, and ongoing attitudes to empire, nature, and the natural world— explored through video installation, mixed media compositions in handmade paper and manila rope, metal and suede prints, and blown glass sculptures.

2016 Awardees

GiveMeCarmelitaTropicana

Soho Repertory Theater, New York, NY

October 23–November 1, 2024

A play that is part love letter to an iconic performance artist, part intergenerational debate about the legacy of “downtown” New York, part theatrical interrogation of the uses/abuses of nostalgia.

JAWWAAD TAYLOR 2020 Awardee

Myth&Logic

Shepard Acres Homes Library, Houston, TX

October 19, 2024–September 19, 2025

A public art sculpture and a metaphor for exploring the challenge of creating contemplative spaces in an ever-changing and chaotic world. Crafted with meticulous detail and profound symbolism, Myth & Logic deals with the geometry of sound moving through diverse environments.

JANICE A. LOWE, TYEHIMBA JESS, YAHDON ISRAEL 2020 Awardees

Olio

JACK, Brooklyn, NY

October 18–19, 2024

A live musical production of the Pulitzer-prize winning book of poems of the same title, presenting the lives of African-American creatives from the Civil War to World War I.

ALAN RUIZ 2019 Awardee

RiskManagement

Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, CT

October 4, 2024–February 19, 2025

An installation of new site-specific sculptures inviting viewers to consider changing ideas around social institutions, audience, politics, and self-image, as well as the attempt to find a form to contain these shifting collective understandings.

MADELEINE HUNT-EHRLICH 2022 Awardee

The Ballad of Suzanne Césaire

Film at Lincoln Center, part of New York Film Festival, New York, NY

September 28–29 and October 4, 2024

A film presenting the life of Suzanne Césaire, one of the mothers of négritude, through an investigation by a group of filmmakers keen to grapple with the writer’s life and legacy—focusing on an actress and new mother haunted by voices as she prepares to play Césaire.

GERMANE BARNES 2022 Awardee

Columnar Disorder

Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL

September 21, 2024–January 27, 2025

An installation reflecting on the enduring legacy of the Classical orders—the Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian—reimagining these architectural orders instead as rooted in the Black experience, history, and values.

JEN LIU 2019 Awardee

I Am Cloud

Blindspot Gallery, Hong Kong

September 17–November 2, 2024

Through videos, paintings, and mixed-media animatronic sculptures, Liu examines the virtualization of work—its realities, its speculative futures, and its historical precedents. The title of the exhibition evokes the Cloud, the cyber infrastructure that stores memory and data, seemingly automated but in fact powered by an invisible soft body network of humans.

YANIRA CASTRO 2023 Awardee

Icameheretoweep/Exorcism=Liberation

Abrons Art Center, New York, NY

September 6–28, 2024. Other iterations in Chicago and Massachusetts, July-November 2024

A public art project exploring occupation, land, and selfdetermination across Puerto Rican diasporic centers in New York City, Chicago, and Western Massachusetts. Using the visual language of political campaigns, it activates streets through sonic experiences and distributed materials, functioning as an intervention and rehearsal for action.

SAM TAM HAM 2022 Awardee

Te Moana Meridian

Portland Art Museum presented by PAM, PICA, Boom Arts

September 6-9, 2024

An experimental opera based on a proposal to the United Nations General Assembly Resolution to formally relocate the international Prime Meridian from Greenwich, England to Te Moananui-ā-Kiwa in the South Pacific Ocean, liberating humanity's collective means of orienting universal time and space from the hegemonic ambitions of Western imperialism.

LUCY KIM 2022 Awardee

MelaninImagesViaGeneticallyModifiedE.coli

Henry Art Gallery, Seattle, Washington

July 20, 2024–February 2, 2025

A bio-art project exploring human pigmentation and the disingenuous use of vision to justify racial categories and inequities.

American Artist (2022 Creative Capital Awardee, Visual Arts), Shaper of God at Pioneer Works, January 24–April 13, 2025. The exhibition marked the premiere of American Artist’s Creative Capital–supported project. Courtesy of the artist and Pioneer Works. Photo by Dan Bradica.

Creative Capital Artists Making Waves

Pulitzer Prize

Three Creative Capital artists won Pulitzer Prizes: Percival Everett’s novel James for Fiction; Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’s play Purpose for Drama; Susie Ibarra’s work Sky Islands for Music.

Sundance Film Festival

Three Creative Capital artists premiered films at Park City this year. Jamie Gonçalves (Producer) premiered the feature documentary Predators, while Cherien Dabis’s All That’s Left of You opened the U.S. Dramatic Competition. Reid Davenport’s Life After won a Special Jury Award.

Venice Biennial Musica

Meredith Monk received the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the Venice Biennale Musica 2025.

Grammy Awards

Meshell Ndegeocello’s No More Water: The Gospel of James Baldwin won the 2025 Grammy Award for Best Alternative Jazz Album, the second consecutive win in this category for Ndegeocello.

National Book Awards

Percival Everett’s James also won the 2024 National Book Award for Fiction.

French Chevalier de L’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres

Etienne Charles was awarded the French Chevalier de L’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.

Obie Awards

Raja Feather Kelly and Becca Blackwell received special citations from the 68th Obie Awards.

Artist Lab

Professional development online education courses accessible to all artists

The Creative Capital Artist Lab combines evergreen elements of professional development for artists with contemporary critical frameworks in cultural discourse to create cohesive, asynchronous courses in English and Spanish. It offers access to exercises from working artists and educators, on-demand course modules, and live discussions to enhance artists’ professional development.

In 2025, we launched the new course “Building Your Financial Future,” which focuses on managing money with the particular financial needs and circumstances of artists in mind. We hosted a total of seven online Artist Lab sessions that explored topics from tax preparation, to engaging audiences, to promotion best practices. Since its launch in 2023, the Artist Lab has served 30,000 artists from 124 countries; 94% of registered users are based in rural, regional, and urban areas in the U.S.

In 2025, Artist Lab guest speakers included: Yanira Castro (2023 Creative Capital Awardee) and Ron Berry, Co-Artistic Director of FuseBox, discussed the ethics of working in community and engaging new audiences; Jen de los Reyes and Oscar Rene Cornejo (2025 Creative Capital Awardees) shared insights into the possibilities of crossdisciplinary collaborations; and Robin Cembalest delivered a 3-part series on promoting projects and practices. Cannupa Hanska Luger (2020 Creative Capital Awardee) and Josh T Franco, collector at large at the Smithsonian’s Archives of American Art, explored how archiving can shape the story of an artist’s practice.

Institutional Members

Artist Lab is free for individual, personal use.

To inquire about joining as an Institutional Member, contact artistlab@creative-capital.org

Artist Services

Our transformative approach is built on the principle that artists need funding as well as networks and advisory services in order to realize new work and build sustainable careers. Awardees have access to unrestricted project funding up to $50,000, professional services, and a curated network of industry experts, cultural producers, and peer mentors. Over a multi-year period, we work with each artist to help define critical moments of development and determine how to best meet their goals.

We provide a range of awardee services

One-on-one staff consultations to review project timelines and goals, and plan project premiere promotion.

Peer mentorship that fosters meaningful artist-to-artist conversations about projects, practices, career trajectories, and personal connections.

Industry connections through in-person roundtable meetings with industry experts, curators, presenters, producers, funders, residencies, and more.

Professional consultations with financial, communications, and strategic planning professionals to build sustainable careers.

We build vibrant community

Artist gatherings and celebrations with artists, patrons, and industry professionals to create meaningful exchange opportunities.

Promotion of awardee projects, events, exhibitions, films, performances, and accolades via email, our website, social media, and press channels.

Events to broaden our community of supporters and sustain our grants and services for future generations.

EISA DAVIS, 2020 CREATIVE CAPITAL AWARDEE IN PERFORMING ARTS

“Creative Capital has given me affirmation that my work is valuable and should be given resources to share with the world. That’s rare, and I’m grateful. I feel supported as a whole artist. I’ve felt structural, systemic generosity.”

Creative Capital Carnival

Our 2025 Creative Capital Carnival celebrated 25 years of championing artistic freedom! We welcomed more than 800 guests from Honolulu to Brownsville to Miami over two productive and inspiring days in New York City. Highlights included in-person roundtable discussions with leading industry experts, breaking bread with our board and supporters, discovering new works-in-progress by 2025 Awardees at Walter Reade Theater, and dancing along LIZN’BOW’s outrageous performance at Stanley H. Kaplan Penthouse at Lincoln Center.

“Everything was lovely! I felt so supported and cared for. Thank you for feeding us, creating all the programming, allowing lots of down time/interstitial time for arrivals and conversations, having the Carnival at Lincoln Center (a dream!), and introducing the cohort to each other and many industry professionals! I am so grateful to attend.” —2025 Creative Capital Awardee

Artist Gatherings Across the Country

Financials Fiscal Year 2025

Creative Capital fundraises every dollar for its grants and programs. Thank you to our generous supporters!

Based on FY25, from July 1, 2024 to June 30, 2025.

Board Members

Chair

Reginald M. Browne Vice Chair Colleen JenningsRoggensack

Members

Edgar Arceneaux*

Laura Bardier

Caroline Black

Isa Catto

Raven Chacon*

Cheryl Finley

Timur Galen

Emily Giacoman

Gina Gibney

Tamar Guttmann

Matthew Keesan

Joseph V. Melillo

Grace Oh

Deirdre Guice Reese

Corey Robinson

Michele Tortorelli

Paige West

Kristina Wong*

*Creative Capital Awardee

Ex Officio

Christine Kuan

Joel Wachs

Emeritus

Archibald L. Gillies

Lyda Kuth

Ruby Lerner

Jeffrey Soros

In Memoriam

William K. Bowes, Jr.

Ron Feldman

Advisory Council

Catherine R. Stimpson, Co-Chair

Fred Wilson, Co-Chair

Elaine Chen-Fernandez

Michelle Coffey

Simone DiLaura

Sarah Duzyk

Hasan Elahi*

JiaJia Fei

Karl Fowlkes, Esq

Lisa Heller

Lewis Hyde

Jess Jacobs

Ruby Lerner

Kevin A. Pemberton

Dr. Deep Penesetti

Ope Sangosanya

James Schamus

Marquise Stillwell

Supporters

Creative Capital Foundation, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, gratefully acknowledges the generosity of numerous foundations, corporations, public funders, and individuals who power our grants and services to artists across the country.

Founding Supporter

The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts

Institutions

Alexandre Gallery Bank of America

Bloomberg Philanthropies

Doris Duke Foundation

Kresge Arts in Detroit

Lambent Foundation Fund, a fund of Tides Foundation

Public Funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council

The Muriel Pollia Foundation

Pollock-Krasner Foundation

Thompson Family Foundation

The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts

Waterson Garner

Individuals

Denisse Acha

Anonymous (6)

Edgar Arceneaux*

Sarah Arison

Theresa Carpenter Beames and Roger Beames in honor of Barbara Simms Carpenter

Nancy Breslin

Jane Brown and Neil Didriksen

Reginald M. Browne

Isa Catto and Daniel Shaw, Catto Shaw Foundation in honor of Bailey Shaw

Raven Chacon*

Cézanne Charles*

Elaine Chen-Fernandez

Julia Christensen*

Christina Daniels

Neil de Crescenzo

Simone DiLaura

Catherine Carver Dunn

Sarah Duzyk

Cathy Edwards*

Hasan Elahi*

JiaJia Fei

Avram Finkelstein*

Karl Fowlkes, Esq.

Gibson Frazier

Linda Genereux and Timur Galen

Emily and Augusto Giacoman

Elaine Goldman and John Benis

Liz and Steven Goldstone

Alejandro González in memory of Lizzie Orizondo

Rosie Gordon-Wallace

Deirdre Guice

Agnes Gund

Jody Guralnick and Michael Lipkin Family Fund

Carina Hahn

Carol Hallock

Bang Geul Han*

Brian Harnetty*

Lisa Heller

Shue Her-Sturm

Augusta Brown Holland

Gill Holland

Kristina Horn

Barbara and Amos Hostetter

Elizabeth Howard

Lewis Hyde

Cristina Ibarra*

Jess Jacobs and Bryan Keller

Colleen JenningsRoggensack/ ASU Gammage

Sarah Jones

Lisa Kim

KJB Images

Allen Kleinman

Emi Kolawole

Wanda Kownacki

Christine Kuan

Lyda Kuth, LEF Foundation

Ruby Lerner

Ann Levy

Melony and Adam Lewis Advised Fund at Aspen

Community Foundation

Scott Macaulay

Jim Walker and Shauta Marsh

Yukari Matsuzawa

KC Maurer

Diane L. Max

Joseph V. Melillo

Ceci Moss

Colleen A. Murphy

Mark Newport*

Tatiana Nikitina

Kristen K. O’Connor

Kathleen O’Grady

Grace Oh, Formation Association

Count Omega and Evangeline Pontefract

Sheryl Oring*

Yukari and Greg Pass

Anne Patterson*

Deep Penesetti MD

Lisa Philp

Scott “Sourdough” Power, Founder, Arterial.org

David L. Ramsay and Richard E. Stewart

In Memory of Henry Leplin

Rasof and Bernard Rasof

Jon Reiss, 8 Above

Corey M. Robinson

Andrew Sabl/Chiwoniso Kaitano Family Fund

Ope Sangosanya

James Schamus

Daphne Seybold

Margaret Silva

Ken Soehner

Paul Song

John D. Spiak

Catharine R. Stimpson

Alice Gray Stites

Meredith Talusan*

Michele Tortorelli and Thomas D. Kearns

Tom and Joan Tropp

Romy Vreeland and Sam Teigen

Gretchen Wagner

Laura Waller

Paige West

Fred Wilson

Kristinawong.com*

Carol Yorke and Gerard Conn

Marina Zurkow*

*Creative Capital Awardee

List includes supporters at the $100 level or more from July 1, 2024 to June 30, 2025.

Funding the creation of groundbreaking art since 1999

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New York, NY 10038

creative-capital.org/donate @creative_capital