Pew Center for Arts and Heritage

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Our Grantmaking

Art and access to it are essential to the fabric of civic life. As a multidisciplinary grantmaker dedicated to fostering a vibrant and diverse cultural ecology in the Philadelphia region, the Center annually awards grants to organizations and artists, whose imaginative programs, events, and artistic work inspire audiences and make Philadelphia a thriving hub for culture.

Meet Our 2024 Grantees

Hear from some of the region’s creative thinkers and makers as they tell us about the vital importance of the arts in civic life and the work they’ll undertake with funding from the Center. 

See the Full List of Grantees

Project Grants

Project grants in two funding areas, Performance and Exhibitions & Public Interpretation, support a spectrum of public programs that engage broad and varied publics in theaters, performing arts venues, museums, galleries, civic sites, community spaces, and neighborhoods.

Happening Now
Sonya Clark, Reversals rehearsal still, 2019. Photo by Carlos Avendaño. Declaration House

Monument Lab

A public art installation reframes the history of America’s founding, centering on the story of Robert Hemings, an enslaved valet who aided Thomas Jefferson at the Philadelphia site where Jefferson drafted the Declaration of Independence.

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Happening Now
Shayla-Vie Jenkins, lead artist for Christ Church Preservation Trust’s On Buried Ground. Photo by Anna M. Maynard. On Buried Ground

Christ Church Preservation Trust

An exhibition reveal the histories of enslaved and freed people of African descent in Philadelphia during the American colonial era.

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Happening Now
Enrique Bostelmann, Autoretrato: Mi Ceguera (My Blindness), 2000. Enrique Bostelmann: Apertures and Borderscapes

The Philip and Muriel Berman Museum of Art

A multifaceted retrospective of Mexican photographer Enrique Bostelmann (1939–2003) blends the artist’s experimental work with new interviews with his family, collaborators, and art historians to create an exhibition, bilingual documentary, and publication.

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Atwater Kent Collection material on display at the Philadelphia History Museum, c. 2018. Drexel University’s Reshaping Historical Narratives through the Atwater Kent Collection presents overlooked artifacts and narratives from the collection. Photo courtesy of Drexel University.
Sonya Clark, Reversals rehearsal still, 2019. Photo by Carlos Avendaño.
A hot mid-morning lunch in school, Ashwood Plantations, South Carolina, 1939. Science History Institute’s Lunchtime examines the history and contemporary implications of the US School Lunch Program. Photo from the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.
Shayla-Vie Jenkins, lead artist for Christ Church Preservation Trust’s On Buried Ground. Photo by Anna M. Maynard.
Enrique Bostelmann, Autoretrato: Mi Ceguera (My Blindness), 2000.

Pew Fellowships in the Arts

Pew Fellowships provide direct financial support through unrestricted grants to distinctive artists of all disciplines who live and work in our region.

Meet Our 2023 Fellows
A Black Nonbinary person looks directly at the camera with their right hand cupping their chin. They are wearing a tall cap and a leather jacket with rings. They have a septum piercing and prideful expression. The person's skin and clothing are various shades of black and the background is white.
Candice Iloh
  • Literature
A portrait of filmmaker Vernon Jordan. He stands outside at night holding his video camera. He is a Black man with facial hair wearing a green v-neck cardigan.
Vernon Jordan, III
  • Literature
  • Film & Media
Carmen Maria Machado, 2023 Pew Fellow. Photo by Neal Santos.
Carmen Maria Machado
  • Literature
Portrait of Pew Fellow Shehrezad Maher.
Shehrezad Maher
  • Film & Media
Filmmaker Darius Clark Monroe.
Darius Clark Monroe
  • Film & Media
Vitche-Boul Ra
Vitche-Boul Ra
  • Performance
Samantha Rise
Samantha Rise
  • Music
Pew Fellow Karen Smith stands playing drums.
Karen Smith
  • Music
Pew Fellow Kristen Neville Taylor seated in her studio.
Kristen Neville Taylor
  • Visual Art
Portrait of Pew Fellow Sumi Tonooka posed outside, leaning on a small keyboard.
Sumi Tonooka
  • Music
Armando Veve, 2023 Pew Fellow. Photo by Neal Santos.
Armando Veve
  • Visual Art
Pew Fellow Phillip B. Williams performs a reading at National Sawdust, Brooklyn, NY. Photo by Elijah Bean.
Phillip B. Williams
  • Literature
Pew Fellow Phillip B. Williams performs a reading at National Sawdust, Brooklyn, NY. Photo by Elijah Bean.

“I see my work as a bridge between the living and the ancestral realms, working through elegies, ancestral worship, divination, mythography, and grief of daily losses.”

— Phillip B. Williams, Writer
Portrait of Pew Fellow Sumi Tonooka posed outside, leaning on a small keyboard.

“The roots of my work lie in the rich soil of jazz and classical traditions in my hometown of Philadelphia.”

— Sumi Tonooka, Composer and musician
Portrait of Pew Fellow Shehrezad Maher.

“Through the documenting or fictionalizing of the lives of Pakistanis and our diaspora, my work is restless for new ways to examine the risks of repressing personal and collective traumas and histories.”

— Shehrezad Maher, Filmmaker

Grantmaking Impact

$192,808,494

Total grant dollars awarded

1,988

Total number of grants in the Center's history

412

Total number of Pew Fellowships for artists