About the Travel and Study Grant: 
The Travel and Study Grant Program awards grants to emerging artists who create new work (music: composers and sound artists; theater: playwrights and creators of performance art and experimental theater; and visual artists). Funds support periods of travel for the purpose of study, exploration, and growth. The program supports such activities as research leading to the creation of new work, the development of collaborations, participation in specific training programs, time for reflection and individualized study, investigating artistic work outside of Minnesota or New York City, and dialogue on aesthetic issues.

Awards are made once per year. Three-person selection panels in each eligible discipline review proposals and recommend recipients to the Jerome Foundation Board, which approves all grants. Selection is based on the quality and potential of the applicant’s work and the significance and appropriateness of the proposed trip. The Foundation may choose to review applications in a two-step process incorporating a first-round screening before panelists review the remaining applications. This program receives many applications and has limited funds available. Although financial need is not a requirement, please consider whether you need these funds to undertake a travel and study trip.

About the Jerome Foundation: 
The Jerome Foundation, created by artist and philanthropist Jerome Hill (1905-1972), makes grants to support the creation and production of new artistic works by emerging artists, and contributes to the professional advancement of those artists. 

The Jerome Foundation supports programs in dance, literature, media arts, music, theater, performance art, the visual arts, multidisciplinary work and arts criticism. It provides financial assistance to nonprofit, tax-exempt arts organizations that support emerging creative artists who are residents of Minnesota and New York City. Choreographers, film/video and other media artists, composers, literary artists, performance artists, playwrights, multidisciplinary artists, visual artists and arts critics receive assistance through Foundation funded programs.

The Foundation seeks to support artists who exhibit significant potential yet are not recognized as established creators by fellow artists and other arts professionals. Examples of recognition include exhibitions, reviews, commissions, performances, grant awards, residencies, fellowships, publications and productions. Factors such as race, gender and geography play a role in determining whether or not an artist is emerging. In some cases, the definition is tied to career progression as it has been commonly understood; in other cases, it follows a more community-based, individually determined progression in an artist's development. The term emerging refers to artistic development, professional accomplishment and recognition, not to stylistic evolution within an artist's work. For more information on how emerging is defined, please request an expanded statement from the Foundation office.

 

Smack Mellon is supported by:  The City of New York Department of Cultural Affairs and the New York State Council on the Arts, a state agency, and with generous support from Smack Mellon’s Members, Jerome Foundation, Agnes Gund and Daniel Shapiro, Richard Massey and the Judith and Donald Rechler Foundation Inc.  Smack Mellon also receives generous support from the National Endowment for the Arts, Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz, City Council Member David Yassky and the New York City Council, The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, The Greenwall Foundation, Independence Community Foundation, Jean and Louis Dreyfus Foundation, Inc., Lily Auchincloss Foundation Inc., Milton and Sally Avery Arts Foundation Inc., New York Community Trust, Robert Sterling Clark Foundation, Inc., The Starry Night Fund of Tides Foundation, and The Roy and Niuta Titus Foundation, Inc.  Space for Smack Mellon’s programs is generously provided by the Walentas Family and Two Trees Management.