Grants up to $15,000 awarded to support exhibition research that encourages, expands, and supports scholarly craft research in the United States.
Grant application is closed.
Download Grant Kit
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Download Grant Kit
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Josh Blackwell, Neveruses (Unnamed), 2014
Grant goals
To encourage innovative research on critical issues in craft theory and history
To investigate neglected questions on craft history and criticism
To support new cross-disciplinary approaches to scholarship in craft
The Craft Research Fund was created to encourage, expand and support scholarly craft research in the United States.
- Proposals are welcome from museum, non-profit gallery, and independent curators.
- Grant funds may be used to support research activities including travel for research, commissioning essays for contributors, documentation such as images or rights to use images or text, as part of the research for future exhibitions.
- The grant awards are not for the printing or web-based dissemination of already completed research, exhibition production, installation, exhibition travel or management.
- General overhead (indirect administrative expenses) is not eligible.
- No capital equipment purchases are eligible for support.
- Applicants must be able to receive taxable income for the duration of the grant or a charitable or educational organizations as defined under the appropriate provisions of the U.S. Internal Revenue Code, and report this grant as income.
- Applicants must be 18 years of age or older.
- This grant is intended to support scholarly research and is not for the creation of artwork.
Examples of exhibition research might include:
- Addressing work by historically important or contemporary craft artist/s
- Presenting a new understanding of the relationship between hand-made production and digital technologies
- Providing a new contribution to the history of the studio craft movement
- Placing American craft in a global context
- Or other topics that offer fresh perspectives within the field
- Seventy percent of the grant will be awarded upon execution of the grant agreement and receipt of the awardee’s W9.
- Recipients will provide a status report on the project half way through the grant period (September 30, 2019).
- Recipients must provide content for at least one blog post.
- The final thirty percent of the grant will be awarded upon receipt of a final report to include a project narrative, a budget report and two copies of any publication produced as a result of the research grant. Project and final report must be completed in 18 months, with a deadline of July 31, 2020. If there is no publication, then provide a copy of the completed research in full.
- Recipients will acknowledge support from “Center for Craft Craft Research Fund” in any publications or presentations resulting from the grant.
Proposals will be reviewed by staff of the Center for Craft for completeness and evaluated by peer-review of readers, who are recognized craft scholars, faculty and/or curators, free of any conflict of interest, based on the following criteria:
- If completed properly, the proposal will advance scholarship and knowledge on craft in the United States
- The plan for dissemination identifies the audience, is reasonable, and has supporting documentation as appropriate
- The project is feasible based on the timeline, expertise, and budget reflected in the application
- The project addresses the goals of the Craft Research Fund
DEADLINE: The application for 2019 Craft Research Fund - Exhibition grants must be submitted via SlideRoom no later than 11:59 pm EST on Friday, October 19, 2018.
NOTIFICATION: Notification of the results will be sent via e-mail in December 2018 for a start date of January 1, 2019. The e-mail address listed on the application form will be used to send out notifications. Please be sure that it is a valid account that you check regularly.
HOW TO APPLY: Applicants must apply using the online application program SlideRoom at http://www.craftcreativitydesign.slideroom.com. Please review the sample application below before beginning your application. Please note there is a separate application for each Craft Research Fund category.
All applicants should create a login to be able to partially complete the form and return to finish it at a later date. Before submitting your application, you will be directed to a confirmation page where you will be able to review your form and return to edit or delete your uploaded files as needed. Once you submit your application, you will not be able to access your form again. Applicants will receive a confirmation email once the application form has been successfully submitted.
2018 Craft Research Fund – Exhibition Grant SAMPLE APPLICATION
This is only a sample application, all applications much be completed in SlideRoom.
Cover sheet
1. Organization Name
2. Your Title
3. Your Personal Website or Project Website.
4. Grant Amount Requested (up to $15,000).
5. Summary of Research (no more than 50 words).
Application Questions
1. Please summarize the following (500 words):
1. Focus of exhibition and relevance to the advancement of craft in the United States
2. Goals and objectives of the exhibition
3. Curatorial research methodology
4. Dissemination plan (exhibition dates, catalogue, online presence, etc.)
2. Please provide a historiography for the ideas central to this exhibition. Identify three other scholars who have written significant works on/around your topic, and describe how your work parallels and pushes the topic forward (500 words or less).
3. Timeline and schedule for completing the project. Projects must be completed by July 31, 2020 (18 months from start date).
4. Budget Form. Provided in SlideRoom.
5. Please provide a budget narrative if necessary.
6. CV of relevant education and experience (no more than 2 pages).
7. The exhibition description (no more than 5 pages, in no less than 12 point type).
8. A bibliography of at least ten sources.
9. One letter of support from the hosting institution that includes why this exhibition is supported.
10. Optional page for image/s that compliment or add clarity to the proposal.
recipients
3 out of 10 Exhibition Grant proposals awarded
$9,925
Support for an exhibition and accompanying catalogue exploring the intersection of craft, commodity, and capitalism in select contemporary artists’ work. The catalogue will provide context for how these themes converge historically and explore how artists can subvert the repressed histories represented by the various commodities they utilize.
Learn moreVIEW SITE
copyright © 2019 Bowdoin College and Scala Arts Publishers, Inc.
$7,000
Support for the exhibition Fast Fashion/Slow Art, investigating the conditions and politics of the mass production and distribution of textiles in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.
Learn moreVIEW SITE
Miriam Schapiro. Personal Appearance #2, 1979 (left), Lady Gengi’s Maze, 1972 (center), Peridot Pinwheel,1979 (right).
© 2018 Estate of Miriam Schapiro / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo by Jenna Bascom; courtesy of the Museum of Arts and Design.
$6,000
Support for the research-driven exhibition Surface/Depth: The Decorative After Miriam Schapiro, the first exhibition to fully investigate Schapiro’s fabric-collages known as “femmages” and their impact on contemporary craft.
Learn moreVIEW SITESelection Committee
Tanya Harrod
Author of the prize-winning The Crafts in Britain in the Twentieth Century (Yale University Press 1999). She contributes regularly to The Burlington Magazine, The Guardian, Crafts, The Spectator and The Times Literary Supplement.
She is on the Advisory Panel of The Burlington Magazine and of Interpreting Ceramics and is Advisor to the Craft Lives Project based at the National Sound Archive of the British Library. She is a member of the International Association of Art Critics, of the London-based Critic’s Circle and of the Art Workers Guild. In 1999 she was given a Ceramics Arts Foundation Award for distinguished service to the Ceramic Arts. With Glenn Adamson and Edward S. Cooke she is the editor of The Journal of Modern Craft.The Last Sane Man: Michael Cardew, modern pots, colonialism and the counterculture (2012) has won the 2013 James Tait Black Prize for biography. Her most recent books are The Real Thing: essays on making in the modern world (2015) and Leonard Rosoman (2016).
Emily Orr
A design historian with particular interests in material culture, industrial design, consumer culture, and retail history.
She is the Assistant Curator of Modern and Contemporary American Design at Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum where she recently co-curated and contributed to the catalog for the exhibition Jazz Age: American Style in the 1920s. She holds a PhD in the History of Design from the Royal College of Art/Victoria & Albert Museum where her thesis explored display design in department stores at the turn of the twentieth century, now the focus for a forthcoming monograph.
Emily Zilber
The editor for Metalsmith and Metalsmith Tech magazines. Previously Emily was the Ronald C. Wornick Curator of Contemporary Decorative Arts at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and Assistant Curator at Cranbrook Art Museum.
Emily has edited and written numerous publications, articles, exhibition texts, including the catalog for Crafted: Objects in Flux (2015), Contemporary Highlights from the Museum of Fine Arts Boston (2016), “Craft’s Restless Boundaries” in Crafting a Continuum: Rethinking Contemporary Craft 92013), and “Curator’s Eye: Thomas Gentille,” Modern Magazine (Summer 2012).
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In order to increase the value and relevance of craft to society, the Center works to advance the understanding of craft in higher education, museums and cultural institutions, and across disciplines. Field building strategies include convening thought leaders, creating, documenting and disseminating research, and launching innovative leadership initiatives. We provide grants and fellowships to emerging and established craft artists, curators, and scholars in order to build a future for the field of craft.
Recognizing that Asheville and the surrounding area has been a bastion for craft in the United States dating back to the Cherokee, the Center is actively working to preserve and advance the craft legacy of Western North Carolina through the development of our property in downtown Asheville, North Carolina and through a series of exhibitions and community-focused initiatives.
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