2023 Jerome Hill Artist Fellows Announced

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ST. PAUL, MN, January 13, 2023— The Jerome Foundation is pleased to announce the 2023 grant recipients in the third round of the Jerome Hill Artist Fellowships program. 54 Fellowships are being awarded (8 in each in the fields of dance; film, video and digital production; literature; music; theater, performance and spoken word; and visual arts, and 3 in each of the newly added fields of technology centered arts and combined artistic fields) to early-career artists based in Minnesota and New York City.

Two-year Fellowship awards total $2,700,000. Each award is $50,000 over two years ($25,000 per year) in direct support to artists to create new work, advance artistic goals and/or promote professional development. President Ben Cameron noted, “The Jerome Hill Artist Fellowships program, now in its third iteration, has become a signature program for the Foundation.  Its unique combination of supporting the creation of new work, artistic development and professional development through individually tailored multi-year grants offers artists important support in ways that are flexible, significant and responsive.”

Applicants applied either individually or jointly—to share a single award—as part of a sustained collaborative. Field-specific panels, composed of artists, curators, artistic leaders and arts administrators, reviewed a total of 702 applicants before identifying 129 as finalists for fuller discussion in advance of recommending a slate of Fellows to the Jerome Board of Directors for approval. In their deliberations, panels considered applicants’ past works, artistic accomplishments, the potential impact of a fellowship on their careers and their artistic field, and their alignment with Jerome’s values of diversity, innovation and risk, and humility. In reaching the final roster of Fellows, panels were charged with recommending to the Jerome Board a cohort that collectively captures the energy and diversity of their respective fields.

At their meeting on December 12, the Board unanimously and enthusiastically approved the panel-recommended 54 Fellowships supporting 26 artists from Minnesota and 29 artists for artists based in New York City. (3 Fellowships were awarded to two-person collaboratives.) At the panels’ behest, an additional 18 artists were awarded smaller one-year grants totaling $180,000, as the Foundation recognized both its financial constraints and the strengths of those artists’ applications. This year’s cohort exemplifies Jerome Foundation’s commitment to diversity and the diversity of artists across all fields with 82% of the Fellows identifying as Black, Native American, Indigenous, Latinx, Asian or Arab American or as multi-racial or multi-ethnic.

“Approving Fellowship grants is a highlight of the year for the Board of the Jerome Foundation. This year’s cohort again represents a thrilling social and aesthetic range of artists who will receive Fellowships that will enable them to advance their practices and engage their communities. Through its central support of artists at early stages in their careers, this program continues the legacy and practice of Jerome Hill himself in an exciting way,” said Board Chair Kate Barr of Minnesota. Jerome Board members also include Sarah Bellamy, Helga Davis, Daniel Alexander Jones, Thomas Lax, Lori Pourier, Rick Scott and Sanjit Sethi. 

Fellows are also offered one-on-one coaching and peer gathering opportunities through the MAP Fund’s Scaffolding for Practicing Artists (SPA) program, designed to help artists individually and collectively consider, invent and co-devise solutions tailored to their specific practice and aesthetic ambitions.

Program Director, Eleanor Savage observed, “Jerome Foundation is enthusiastic in our support of these early career Minnesota and New York City-based artists who are taking creative risks in expanding, questioning, experimenting with or re-imagining artistic forms, and who embrace their roles and consciously work with a sense of service as part of a larger community of artists and citizens. During this time of many disruptions, offering flexible funding over the course of two-years, in combination with the individualized professional development through the MAP Fund, the Foundation hopes to offer artists the resources to be emergent and adaptive in their approaches to vibrant, sustainable careers.”

Altogether, the total direct investment in individual artists is $2,880,000 and the total program support, including the individualized professional development support, is more than $3,255,000.

DANCE: Jonathan Gonzalez, Scott Stafford, Ogemdi Ude

LITERATURE: Andrea Abi-Karam, Kathryn Savage

FILM, VIDEO AND DIGITAL PRODUCTION: Amber Fares, Marcie LaCerte, Eunice Lau

MUSIC: Selwa Abd, Seong Ae Kim, Pyeng Threadgill

THEATER, PERFORMANCE AND SPOKEN WORD: nicHi douglas, Yuliya Tsukerman, Shayok Misha Chowdhury

VISUAL ARTS: Rowan Renee, Jordan Strafer

TECHNOLOGY CENTERED ARTS: Jiabao Li

COMBINED ARTISTIC FIELDS: Alex Romania

The following artists did not receive funding but were designated as finalists in their fields:

DANCE: Malcolm-x Betts, Alexandra Bodnarchuk, Kayla Farrish, Nile Harris, Shantelle Jackson, Johnnie Mercer, Barakha Patel

FILM, VIDEO AND DIGITAL PRODUCTION: Suha Araj, Pilar Garcia-Fernandezsesma, Natalie Harris, Derek Howard, Yasmin Mistry, Maribeth Romslo, Taryn Ward

LITERATURE: Mike Alberti, Helen Betya Rubinstein, Darrel Alejandro Holnes, Trevor Ketner, Emily Luan, Sarah M. Sala, Arianna Tison

MUSIC: Eric Carranza, Ashni Dave, Stephanie Henry, Midori Larsen, Emi Makabe, Arcoiris Sandoval, Angela Sclafani, Alicia Waller

THEATER, PERFORMANCE AND SPOKEN WORD: Lara Gerhardson, MJ Kaufman, Cristina Luzárraga, Lester Mayers, C. Meaker, Talia Oliveras, Nia Farrell (Ta-Nia), Ruth Tang, Else Went, Kit Yan and Melissa Li

VISUAL ARTS: Mimi Bai, Coleman Collins, Ne-Dah-Ness Greene, Gi (Ginny) Huo, Alex Ito, Sagarika Sundaram, Kiyomi Taylor, Amy Usdin

TECHNOLOGY CENTERED ARTS: Mafe Izaguirre, Victor Timofeev, Nitcha Tothong, Or Zubalsky

COMBINED ARTISTIC FIELDS: Madeline Granlund, John Maria Gutierrez, Jason Isolini, Muyassar Kurdi, Mary Prescott, Leonardo Sandoval and Gregory Richardson (Music From The Sole)

The Jerome Hill Artist Fellowship is named for Jerome Hill (1905-72), an Academy Award-winning filmmaker, painter, photographer, composer, and supporter of the arts and artists. Throughout his life, he offered financial assistance to numerous artists and humanists to continue their work and in 1964 created what is today known as the Jerome Foundation.

Today, the Foundation seeks to contribute to a dynamic and evolving culture by supporting the creation, development, and production of new works by early career/emerging artists. It focuses resources on grants to early career artists and those nonprofit arts organizations that serve them in the state of Minnesota and in the five boroughs of New York City.

The MAP Fund invests in contemporary performing arts as the critical foundation of imagining—and ultimately co-creating—a more equitable and vibrant society. MAP is unique in its focus on seeding the research and creation phases of new performance work, and is the longest running private funding source for contemporary performance across the country. Our guidelines and selection process uplift artists whose work interrogates social and cultural hierarchies and the injustices they can engender.