All submissions are due by 4:30 pm on the quarterly deadline date.
Click HERE to review the 2021 DeHaan Artist of Distinction Guidelines
15 business days, at the earliest, after quarterly deadline.
For those interested, applicants may submit a preliminary draft of their application for feedback from the Arts Council's Grant Services team. Please submit draft by the following date:
All draft review submissions are due by 4:30 pm on the quarterly draft deadline date (two weeks before application deadlines).
Register using the links below.
Q&A Sessions
Workshop
General Grant Information
As part of its mission, the Arts Council works with local foundations to support and nurture the careers of professional artists. In 2017, the Christel DeHaan Family Foundation (CDFF) and the Arts Council of Indianapolis (ACI) created and piloted a new juried artist grant/award program to provide quick turnaround project funding for professional artists in Indiana that promotes, celebrates, recognizes, and rewards excellence. The aim of the program is to recognize contemporary visual artists and support their exceptional projects.
The DeHaan Artist of Distinction Award Program will honor up to five contemporary visual artists with grants of up to $10,000 each year for aspirational visual arts projects. Each project must demonstrate an immediate need for the requested funds and be completed within the stated deadline. It is intended to allow a high-tolerance for risk and exploration and will provide support for an artist’s creative practice that will help her/him push their work in dynamic ways. Each artist will submit a final report at the end of the process and may be included in a final curated exhibition.
Applications are reviewed quarterly but are accepted on a rolling basis, and may be submitted at any time. All submissions are due by 4:30 pm on the quarterly deadline date. Applications received after 4:30 pm will be included in the next adjudication cycle. Upon selection of the award recipient(s), those applications that were not successfully funded will be reopened so that applicants can make edits to their original application and re-submit for a future deadline.
Our 2021 panelists are C. Ondine Chavoya, Ph.D., Williams College; Kelli Morgan, Ph.D., Tufts University; Melanee Harvey, Ph.D., Howard University; Melynne Klaus, Christel DeHaan Family Foundation; and Shannon Linker, Arts Council of Indianapolis.
Please note that all grant awards are subject to the availability of funds for up to five contemporary artists each year.
For more information, please contact This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..
Multimedia Artist
Burzon's work explores the intersections of sexuality, race, gender, and religion. It is driven by his Pilipino-American background, interest in religion's role in culture and familial relationships, as well as Catholicism's traditions, imagery, theatricality, and its psychological vestige.
Visual Artivist
Vásquez's work experiments with the conceptual use of papel picado, a Mexican Folk art. She transforms layers of intricate cut paper into murals, creates wearable sculptures, and exhibits large-scale installations. Vasquez will use the grant to preserve her delicate and detailed hand-cut paper murals in a secure climate-controlled environment.
Photographer
Lubrick is a photographer whose work represents a visual collection of deconstructing and reconstructing autobiographical moments. His unnamed project is inspired by COVID-19, the political environment, and art-world stereotypes. His project will transform sculptural floral compositions into words or phrases that resonate with many of these divisive themes.
Painter
Archie is a landscape and figurative painter. His project “The Risk and Beauty of Humanity: Landscapes of the Underground Railroad.” will use landscapes and waterscapes to document historical sites of the Underground Railroad in Indiana as they currently exist. He will also create a book providing historical data on the selected sites.
Visual Artivist
Jones, a visual artist/activist, will study innovations in papermaking. During his studies, he will develop and complete a comprehensive, large-scale body of two-dimensional work completed with paper from books on the twentieth-century history of Bartholomew County, Indiana. Jones will also learn how to create large, three-dimensional paper sculptures.
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