The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage
About Pew Fellowships in the Arts
Pew Fellowships in the Arts (PFA), a program of The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage, was established by The Pew Charitable Trusts in 1991, and annually awards up to 12 fellowships of $60,000 to artists of exemplary talent working in a wide variety of performing, visual, and literary disciplines. The goal of PFA is to raise the visibility, both within and beyond the region, of the Philadelphia area's most talented individual artists by concentrating support on practitioners in all disciplines whose work is characterized by excellence, imagination, and ongoing exploration and growth.
PFA will achieve this by:
- Awarding up to 12 unrestricted "no strings attached" fellowships of $60,000 over 1–2 years to artists of exemplary talent in the five-county Philadelphia area. There are three criteria for selection of Fellows: artistic excellence, evidence of serious commitment to practice and ability to use the grant effectively, and potential for the fellowship to facilitate subsequent creative work. Although applicants are reviewed for their achievements, the fellowship is not a reward for past accomplishment, but rather an investment in an artist's ongoing generative potential
- Creating a strong cohort of fellows across disciplines through a variety of convenings to exchange ideas, information, and explore commonalities across disciplines
- Assisting Fellows to achieve their artistic and career goals by connecting them to additional resources in the region and in the field.
Through such support, PFA aims to elevate the quality and raise the profile of individual artistic work in the region. The program intends to support artists who are poised to take full advantage of what the fellowship has to offer to significantly impact and advance their work. Fellowships may be awarded to artists at any stage of their career development and to artists working in a wide range of aesthetics and traditions.
The program is in its 19th year and has awarded 244 fellowships to 249 artists, for a total investment of over $12.5 million in the creative and professional development of working artists in the five-county Philadelphia area. Fellowships have been awarded to three collaborative teams over the years.
