Creative Capital Awards & State of the Art Prize
Annual grants up to $50,000 plus professional development support. New State of the Art Prize awards $10,000 to one artist per state.
Creative Capital, a New York City-based nonprofit arts granting organization, has announced its 2026 Creative Capital Awards and the inaugural State of the Art Prize. This new program provides grants for artists in all 50 U.S. states, Washington D.C., and two territories: Guam and Puerto Rico.
The Creative Capital Awards program annually grants up to $50,000 in unrestricted project funding to individual artists, along with professional development support. The program received 4,546 applications, from which one artist in each state was selected for the inaugural State of the Art Prize, which awards $10,000 in unrestricted funds.
The organization describes the new granting program as extending "its democratic, national, open call to serve more artists at the grassroots level and to foster creativity and innovation in a broad range of rural, regional, and urban communities."
Recent awardees include Gesel Mason, Artistic Director of Gesel Mason Performance Projects and Associate Professor at University of Texas at Austin, selected for her NO BOUNDARIES: Dancing the Visions of Contemporary Black Choreographers project. This multiform, living archive charts the lives and legacies of contemporary Black choreographers through performance, video documentaries, and digital archive components.
Also awarded is Liss LaFleur, a Denton-based interdisciplinary artist and Associate Professor in New Media Art at University of North Texas College of Visual Arts and Design. LaFleur produces work combining art, technology, and community activism, with subjects including queer identity, the Stonewall uprising, and the #MeToo movement.
The grants support unrestricted project funding, allowing artists flexibility in how they use the resources. This opportunity is open to individual artists working in all disciplines and is not limited to specific artistic mediums or project types.