The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage is a nonprofit

grantmaking A grant is a fund given by an end entity grant – often a public body, charitable foundation, or a specialised grant-making institution – to an individual or another entity (usually, a non-profit organisation, sometimes a business or a loca ...

organization and knowledge-sharing hub for arts and culture in

Philadelphia Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the List of municipalities in Pennsylvania#Municipalities, largest city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the List of United States cities by population, sixth-largest city i ...

Pennsylvania Pennsylvania (; ( Pennsylvania Dutch: )), officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a state spanning the Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes regions of the United States. It borders Delaware to its southeast, ...

, US established in 2005. In 2008, Paula Marincola was named the first

executive director Executive director is commonly the title of the chief executive officer of a non-profit organization, government agency or international organization. The title is widely used in North American and European not-for-profit organizations, though ...

. The Center receives funding from

The Pew Charitable Trusts The Pew Charitable Trusts is an independent non-profit, non-governmental organization (NGO), founded in 1948. With over 6 billion in assets, its stated mission is to serve the public interest by "improving public policy, informing the public, a ...

and makes project grants in two areas, Performance and Exhibitions & Public Interpretation, as well as awarding grants to individual artists through Pew Fellowships. In 2021, the Center announced the introduction of Re:imagining Recovery grants to assist in COVID-19 recovery.

History and timeline

In 2005,

brought seven programs—in dance, visual arts and exhibitions, heritage, cultural management, music, theater, and individual artist fellowships—together under one roof, as The Philadelphia Center for Arts & Heritage. The Center received its current name in 2008. These programs have since merged to form a single entity that awards grants throughout Greater Philadelphia. In 2013 the Center merged its Project Grant programs to create two new funding categories: Performance and Exhibitions & Public Interpretation. Since 1989, the Center has awarded over $153 million to artists and arts organizations in the

Southeastern Pennsylvania The Delaware Valley is a metropolitan region on the East Coast of the United States that comprises and surrounds Philadelphia, the sixth most populous city in the nation and 68th largest city in the world as of 2020. The toponym Delaware Val ...

region, which includes Bucks, Chester,

Delaware Delaware ( ) is a state in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States, bordering Maryland to its south and west; Pennsylvania to its north; and New Jersey and the Atlantic Ocean to its east. The state takes its name from the adjacent Del ...

, Montgomery, and

counties. The historical timeline for The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage is as follows: * 1989: Philadelphia Music Project * 1991: Pew Fellowships in the Arts * 1993: Dance Advance * 1995: Philadelphia Theatre Initiative * 1997: Philadelphia Exhibitions Initiative * 1998: Heritage Philadelphia Program * 2001: Philadelphia Cultural Management Initiative * 2005: Programs brought together as The Philadelphia Center for Arts & Heritage * 2008: Center renamed The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage * 2013: Center moves from seven to three funding areas: Performance, Exhibitions & Public Interpretation, and Pew Fellowships * 2021: Center introduces ''Re:imagining Recovery'' grants to assist in COVID-19 recovery.

Pew Fellowships

Pew Fellowships is a funding program of The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage, established by the Pew Charitable Trusts in 1991, which offers direct support to individual

-area artists across disciplines, annually awarding up to 12 unrestricted grants of $75,000. Beginning in 2019, the Pew Fellows-in-Residence program awards fellowships to two artists. The Pew Fellowships provide artists with an economic freedom that presents the opportunity to focus on their individual practices over a considerable period of time—to explore, to experiment, and to develop their work. The program aims to elevate the quality and raise the profile of individual artistic work in Philadelphia's five-county region, to create a strong community of Pew Fellows, and to help them achieve their artistic and career goals by connecting them to additional resources in the field. Pew Fellowships are by nomination only, and selections are made through a two-tier peer review process. Applications are first reviewed by discipline-specific panels, which select finalists to be reviewed by a final interdisciplinary panel. Panelists are artists and arts and culture professionals from outside of the Philadelphia area; chosen for their expertise, they serve for one year. See a full history of Pew Fellowships recipients.

Advancement grants

Advancement grants were awarded to high-performing cultural organizations in the five-county Philadelphia region, and are intended to support organizations seeking to make lasting improvements to their programming, audience engagement, and financial health. Advancement grants were awarded from 2014 to 2017.

As hub for knowledge-sharing

Beyond its work as a cultural grantmaker in

, the Center has established itself as a hub for knowledge-sharing beyond the region, working in the areas of artistic expression and cultural interpretation. To engage in an international arts dialogue, the Center develops and hosts a range of activities, which concern artistic production, interpretation, and presentation. Activities include lectures, symposia, and workshops, and commissioned scholarship to explore critical issues in the fields served by the Center. The Center's website houses a series of online essays and interviews, along with information about Center-funded events and grantees. A multidisciplinary group of cultural practitioners, scholars, and consultants from around the world have contributed to the Center's ongoing knowledge-sharing activities, including Jérôme Bel,

Romeo Castellucci Romeo Castellucci (born August 4, 1960) is an Italian theatre director, playwright, artist and designer. Since the 1980s he has been one part of the European theatrical avant-garde. Biography Romeo Castellucci graduated with a degree in paintin ...

Tacita Dean Tacita Charlotte Dean CBE, RA (born 1965) is a British / German visual artist who works primarily in film. She was a nominee for the Turner Prize in 1998, won the Hugo Boss Prize in 2006, and was elected to the Royal Academy of Arts in 2008. ...

Anna Deavere Smith Anna Deavere Smith is an American actress, playwright, and professor. She is known for her roles as National Security Advisor Dr. Nancy McNally in '' The West Wing'' (2000–06), hospital administrator Gloria Akalitus in the Showtime series ''N ...

Thelma Golden Thelma Golden (born 1965 in St. Albans, Queens) is the Director and Chief Curator of The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York City, United States. Golden joined the Museum as Deputy Director for Exhibitions and Programs in 2000 before succeeding ...

Anna Halprin Anna Halprin (born Hannah Dorothy Schuman; July 13, 1920 – May 24, 2021) was an American choreographer and dancer. She helped redefine dance in postwar America and pioneer the experimental art form known as postmodern dance and referred to hers ...

, Barkley L. Hendricks, Bill T. Jones,

Miranda July Miranda July (born Miranda Jennifer Grossinger; February 15, 1974) is an American film director, screenwriter, singer, actress and author. Her body of work includes film, fiction, monologue, digital presentations and live performance art. She w ...

Tony Kushner Anthony Robert Kushner (born July 16, 1956) is an American author, playwright, and screenwriter. Lauded for his work on stage he's most known for his seminal work ''Angels in America'' which earned a Pulitzer Prize and a Tony Award. At the turn ...

, Claudia La Rocco,

Ralph Lemon Ralph Lemon (born August 1, 1952 in Cincinnati, Ohio) is an American choreographer, company director, writer, visual artist and a conceptualist. Raised in a religious environment, he developed his artistic creativity as a child.Diana Stockon, � ...

Paul Schimmel Paul Reinhard Schimmel (born August 4, 1940) is an American biophysical chemist and translational medicine pioneer. Career Paul Schimmel is a Professor of Molecular Medicine at The Scripps Research Institute. Prior to joining The Scripps Resear ...

David Lang (composer) David Lang (born January 8, 1957) is an American composer living in New York City. Co-founder of the musical collective Bang on a Can, he was awarded the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Music for '' The Little Match Girl Passion'', which went on to win ...

, Boris Charmatz,

Ann Hamilton (artist) Ann Hamilton is a visual artist who emerged in the early 1980s known for her large-scale multimedia installations. After receiving her BFA in textile design from the University of Kansas in 1979, she lived in Banff, Alberta, and Montreal, Quebe ...

, and many more. Director, playwright, and actor Ain Gordon served as the Center's inaugural Visiting Artist from 2011–13, returning for an additional term in 2018–2019. Kristy Edmunds, Executive and Artistic Director, Center for the Art of Performance at the

University of California, Los Angeles The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California. UCLA's academic roots were established in 1881 as a teachers college then known as the southern branch of the California S ...

, served as the Center's first Visiting Scholar. Dr. Suse Anderson, Museum Studies professor at

George Washington University The George Washington University (GW or GWU) is a Private university, private University charter#Federal, federally chartered research university in Washington, D.C. Chartered in 1821 by the United States Congress, GWU is the largest Higher educat ...

, current president at

Museum Computer Network The Museum Computer Network (MCN) is a US-based non-profit organization for professionals with an interest in the use of computer technology for museums. Overview MCN was established in 1967 in the New York City area. The history of MCN spans a pe ...

, and host of the

Best of the Web Awards Best of the Web awards was an annual contest for museum-related website content, organized each year at the '' Museums and the Web'' conference. A committee of peers recognizes the best museum work on the web. Sites are nominated by museum professi ...

-winning podcast Museopunks, served as the Center's first Visiting Technologist in 2018-19.

Publications and research

Center publications include ''Pigeons on the Grass Alas: Contemporary Curators Talk About the Field'', ''The Sentient Archive: Bodies, Performance, and Memory'', and ''What Makes a Great Exhibition?'', an essay anthology that examines various components of exhibition-making, edited by Paula Marincola. In 2011, the Center published ''Letting Go? Sharing Historical Authority in a User-Generated World'', an anthology of thought pieces and case studies related to shared historical authority in museums and

public humanities Public humanities is the work of engaging diverse publics in reflecting on heritage, traditions, and history, and the relevance of the humanities to the current conditions of civic and cultural life. Public humanities is often practiced within feder ...

projects. The anthology explores subfields such as oral history and

digital humanities Digital humanities (DH) is an area of scholarly activity at the intersection of computing or Information technology, digital technologies and the disciplines of the humanities. It includes the systematic use of digital resources in the humanitie ...

to interrogate the changing nature of expertise in the museum field, and considers co-curation as a method for encouraging

public engagement Public engagement or public participation is a term that has recently been used to describe "the practice of involving members of the public in the agenda-setting, decision-making, and policy-forming activities of organizations/institutions respons ...

. The Center's ''danceworkbook'' series offers web-based publications that explore the choreographic process. In February 2015, the Center launched the fourth iteration of the series, ''A Steady Pulse: Restaging Lucinda Childs, 1963–78''. In January 2017, the Center produced ''In Terms of Performance'' in collaboration with the Arts Research Center at the University of California, Berkeley. The online keywords anthology features essays and interviews from more than 50 prominent artists, curators, presenters, and scholars who reflect on common yet contested terms in interdisciplinary cultural practice. In 2019, the Center published ''Site Read'', an anthology in which "seven exhibition makers lay out the motivations, conditions, logistics, and consequences of shows they organized that now stand as icons of structural innovation in terms of site," published by Mousse Publishing.

List of Pew Fellows (1992-2020)

References

{{reflist

External links

The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage

Full List of Pew Fellows, PCAH Website

"Cash is king. But it's not everything!" Grantmakers in the Arts website
Organizations based in Philadelphia Awards established in 1991 Fellowships Culture of Philadelphia Art in Pennsylvania The Pew Charitable Trusts * 1991 establishments in Pennsylvania Organizations established in 2005 2005 establishments in Pennsylvania