Applications are closed

See below to learn about the jurors


General info

  • Application fee: $20

  • Applications open June 15, 2023

  • Application info session in July

  • Applications close August 6, 11:59pm

  • 10 finalists interviewed in October

  • New fellows announced in late-October

All applications must be submitted through SlideRoom, we will not accept applications through any other form. If the application fee is prohibitive, please contact lily@ha-dc.org; a limited number of applications are available at no cost.


Applicant criteria

  • Must be 21 years or older

  • No more than 1 solo exhibition at a traditional gallery setting within the DMV, prior to applying for the fellowship

    • BFA and MFA solo shows do not count toward the limit

  • Cannot be a full-time student or equivalent during the fellowship


Application requirements and questions

  • Artist biography (word limit: ~500, written in the third person)

  • Artist statement (word limit: ~250, written in the first person)

  • Hamiltonian Fellows are each asked to focus on a single major project throughout the duration of their fellowship, culminating in a solo show or presentation in their second year. Please describe a current artistic pursuit that you might build upon. (word limit: ~250)

  • How do you envision the next phase of your professional career as an artist? (word limit: ~150)

  • What are some professional challenges that you feel are currently holding you back from reaching that next phase? (word limit: ~150)

  • Using our fellowship offerings as a blueprint, what knowledge, skills, and overall professional development would help you mitigate these challenges? (word limit: ~150)

  • Are you currently operating within, or in search of, an artist community? In either case, what does showing up in that community look like to you? (word limit: ~150)

  • Please list four artists you like to think about. (word limit: ~15)

  • Please tell us about some of your interests outside of art. (word limit: ~150)

  • Do you currently have a studio space? (yes or no)

  • Hamiltonian Artists will provide one studio free of charge to fellows, on a rotating basis. Would you be interested in using this studio? If so, how would you use it? (word limit: ~150)

  • Website URL (optional)

  • Instagram URL (optional)

  • Please submit contact information for 3 references. Your references are not required to submit formal letters of recommendation, but they will be contacted if you are invited for an interview.


Attachments

  • Artist CV

  • Although not required, you may submit up to 3 other supporting materials such as press coverage, reviews, exhibition catalogues, or other public write-ups about you or your work. Please include the publication title and date.


Portfolio

  • Please provide 10 items.

    • Images (up to 5MB each)

    • Video (up to 250MB each)

    • Audio (up to 30MB each)

    • PDF

    • You may also link to media from YouTube, Vimeo, and SoundCloud

  • For new media artists, individual video samples should not exceed 3 minutes in duration.

  • Please label each file with the title of the work and your initials, not your full name.

    • Correct: JS_untitled2.jpg

    • Incorrect: JoSmith_untitled2.jpg

    • You may include up to 2 details, additional angles, or installation images when appropriate.



The Jury

Amir Byron Browder

Amir Byron Browder is a Black African American cultural organizer, curator, and arts advocate born and raised in Washington, DC. He is the founder of Homme, a multidisciplinary creative community and home for emerging artists. His practice is rooted in the communal and transformative experience of art and building new platforms that eliminate traditional barriers-to-entry for creative success. Browder has exhibited between 60–80 artists between his two locations of Homme Gallery in DC.

 

Michele Carlson

Michele Carlson is a multidisciplinary practitioner working across the fields of art, writing, publishing, and collective practice. In her visual work, Carlson explores imaginative ways that communities collect, work together, and impact one another. This speculative practice partners with her work as one third of the arts collective Related Tactics, who create projects at the intersection of race, art, and culture. Related Tactics have been resident artists at Kala Art Institute’s Print Public artist residency, and recipients of the Center for Craft’s Craft Research Fund Artist Fellowship. Carlson’s critical writings on art and culture can be found in numerous national publications and she is currently working on a manuscript titled The Visits, which examines the way kinship and family are constructed against the backdrop of incarceration. Carlson is an Associate Professor of Printmaking at the George Washington University’s Corcoran School of the Arts and Design.

 

Safiyah Cheatam

Safiyah Cheatam is a multimedia artist and Afrofuturist and maintains a conceptual art practice based in research and storytelling of Black Islam. She is currently the Assistant Manager of Teen Programs at the Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, MD. In 2020, she was a curatorial Research Assistant at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture, for the exhibition Afrofuturism: A History of Black Futures (2023). She is a recipient of Washington Project for the Arts’ Wherewithal Grant, Red Bull Arts’ microgrant, and Robert W. Deutsch Foundation’s Rubys Artist Grant, and has been a resident artist at VisArt’s Bresler Residency. Cheatam has been featured in the Washington Post, BmoreArt, and NBC News, and has exhibited nationally. She cofounded the Islam & Print artist fellowship and serves on the board of the Baltimore chapter of the Awesome Foundation, an organization that provides microgrants. Cheatam earned her MFA from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.

 

Cynthia Hodge-Thorne

Cynthia Hodge-Thorne is a Washington, DC-based art historian with interests in modern and contemporary art. Her practice considers the intricate relationships between art, embedded histories, and the intersectionality of race, gender, and sexuality. She has been a recipient of the Robert E. Meyerhoff and Rheda Becker Curatorial Fellowship at the Baltimore Museum of Art where she was involved with all aspects of the commission Mickalene Thomas: A Moment’s Pleasure (2020). Hodge-Thorne has worked with American University's Alper Initiative for Washington Art, Washington, DC; the Washington Project for the Arts, Washington, DC; and the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, Washington, DC.

 

Helina Metaferia

Helina Metaferia is an interdisciplinary artist working across collage, assemblage, video, performance, and social engagement. Her work has been included in Thinking Historically in the Present (2023), the Sharjah Biennial 15, United Arab Emirates; and she has had solo exhibitions at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA; the Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, RI; and the Museum of African Diaspora, San Francisco, CA. Her work is in the permanent collection of institutions, including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA; and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York, NY. Metaferia’s work has been written about in publications, including the New York Times, the Financial Times, the Washington Post, the Boston Globe, the Art Newspaper, and Artnet News. Metaferia is an Assistant Professor of Visual Art at Brown University’s Department of Visual Art, and lives and works in New York City. Metaferia earned her MFA from Tufts University and has attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture.