Visual Arts Fellowships FAQ

• Annual, juried, merit-based competition; recipients are selected anonymously
• Opportunity for Virginians to receive funding for their education or career in the Visual Arts or Art History
• 85 years of privately funded support
• Over $6 million and more than 1,500 Fellowships awarded in the program’s history

The Cy Twombly Fellowship, established in 2019, honors the renowned Virginia artist and two-time VMFA Fellowship winner. The award is supported by the McClintic Endowment and is to go to a graduate visual artist who is, and will continue to, make a significant contribution to the arts in Virginia.

This is a $6,000 graduate-level Fellowship. Graduate students do not need to apply separately for this Fellowship; all graduate student applicants will automatically be considered.

A legal resident of Virginia…

• has a valid VA driver’s license and/or
• pays income taxes in VA and/or
• is a registered VA voter and/or
• is a student who qualifies/pays in-state tuition to an accredited VA college, university, or school of the arts

An important residency note for students:

• Students who attend an accredited Virginia college, university, or school of the arts, but do not pay in-state tuition are not eligible to apply.
• Students who are legal residents of Virginia but attend college out-of-state still qualify as Virginia residents.

• VMFA, as a state agency, is required to process payments through the Commonwealth of Virginia’s financial management system.
• All recipients of a VMFA Fellowship must complete a Commonwealth of Virginia W-9 Form in order to be entered into the state’s payment system and be issued fellowship award checks.
• To complete a W-9 Form, you must have a valid SSN and be able to certify you are a “U.S. citizen or other U.S. person.”
• Holders of a Permanent Resident Card are lawful permanent residents and are eligible to apply for a VMFA Fellowship.

Undergraduate and graduate applicants must be enrolled full-time in a degree-seeking program at an accredited college, university, or school of the arts. Although most students who apply are majoring in an art-related field, it is not required.

The online application opens the first Friday in November of each year. A link to the application is provided on the VMFA Fellowship webpage.

Yes! Before beginning the application, it may be helpful to familiarize yourself with its format and the information/files that you will be asked to provide.

Deadline: Friday, November 7, 2025 at 5 pm

• Please be sure to start the application process early and contact the Fellowship Office before Friday, November 7 if you need any assistance completing the online application.
• Formstack is known to malfunction if the system is overloaded. We strongly encourage you to complete your application well in advance of the deadline to allow time for work samples to upload and to avoid potential technical issues. Please do not wait until minutes before 5 pm to submit your application.
• Paper applications, incomplete applications, and applications not received by the deadline will not be considered.

Yes, you can save and resume the application by clicking the “Save and Resume Later” link found at the bottom of the application page. However, only text you have typed into the application fields will be saved. When you return to your application, you will have to reselect all of the files that you wish to upload.

This is a limitation of the Formstack platform, and we apologize in advance for any frustration this may cause.

After your application has been submitted, you will no longer have access to your application. You will not be able to view your application or make any changes.

If your application has been accepted, you will see the following message appear on a new screen:

“Congratulations! This is your confirmation that your 2026-27 VMFA Visual Arts Fellowship application is complete and has been successfully submitted.”

You will not receive an email confirming that your application has been accepted. If in doubt, feel free to contact the Fellowship Office for confirmation.

Formstack recommends using Firefox, but Google Chrome and Safari are also supported web browsers.

See the full list of browsers and other system requirements.

You will get an error message if the image files you are trying to submit are too large (more than 25MB total). You will need to resize your files and submit your application again.

You will also get an error message if you have forgotten to complete any of the required sections of the application. You will need to go back and complete these and then resubmit your application.

To troubleshoot technical issues, Formstack recommends:

• Using a reliable internet connection. A connectivity issue could prevent your application from being successfully submitted.
• Using the latest version of a compatible web browser.
• Clearing your cache following the directions provided on Formstack’s system requirements webpage.

In the past, applicants have reported that switching to a different device or internet connection has been a successful solution.

Applicants are asked to apply using only one artistic discipline for a few reasons, including the following:

1. Jurors can more easily judge the artistic merit in a body of work when that body of work is of a cohesive discipline.
2. For our Fellowship recipients, we would like to see demonstrated a museum quality body of work; one way that we see this defined is in the cohesiveness of the discipline.

The disciplines should be thought of as general categories. There are often works of art that could fit in more than one discipline. Applicants should select the discipline that most closely corresponds to the body of work they are submitting.

Submissions are not judged within these disciplines, but instead within eligibility categories (Professional, Graduate, Undergraduate) across all disciplines.

• Professionals: Works may not be in-progress, and all works must have been completed in the past three years (2022-present).
• Undergraduates/Graduates: Works may not be in-progress, and four of the works (or one of the films) must have been completed in the past three years (2022-present).
• Art History: All papers must have been written in the past three years (2022-present).

• If you are chosen to receive a Fellowship, all application materials are kept on record at VMFA.
• All remaining materials (application, resumes, transcripts, artist statements) are disposed of according to VA state guidelines.

All applicants are reviewed anonymously by jurors from outside institutions, arts organizations, and museums.

• Professional recipients are selected by a juror of national reputation.
• Undergraduate and Graduate visual arts recipients are selected by a distinguished regional arts professional.
• Graduate Art History recipients are selected by a distinguished out-of-state or regional art history professional.

VMFA invites new jurors each year to make selections. Selections are made anonymously, so winning repeatedly speaks to the talent of the recipients.

Jurors will remain anonymous until the Fellowship recipients are announced in February.

The juror only has access to an applicant’s:

• Work samples (images/videos/research papers)
• Work sample details (description of each work)
• Artist statement

All other application materials (personal information, CV/resume, and transcript) are for VMFA internal use only and are not seen by the juror.

Applications are reviewed using a blind jury process. It is very important to maintain anonymity to ensure that your work is judged solely on artistic merit. For this reason, we ask that:

• No legible artist names/signatures appear on artworks.
• No artist names appear in the opening or closing credits of a film/video.
• Artists names are not used in the text of the artist statement.

• Funds are given to recipients in 3 lump payments in the months of August, January, and April.
• There are no restrictions on how the award funds are spent.
• The award funds are intended to help further the recipient’s academic or professional career.

Professional recipients must:

1. Remain a permanent VA resident during the fellowship period of May 2026–May 2027
2. Submit a year-end report regarding benefits of Fellowship funds

Undergraduate and Graduate recipients must:

1. Remain enrolled as full-time students during the entire academic year of Aug 2026–May 2027 while maintaining VA residency
2. Provide official registrar’s enrollment certificate each semester
3. Submit 2 semester reports regarding benefits of Fellowship funds

• Artists who have been awarded a total of three VMFA Fellowships are no longer eligible for any future Fellowships.
• If you received a 2020 Virginia Artist Relief Fellowship, it does not count toward the three Fellowship limit.
• VMFA invites new jurors each year to make selections. Selections are made anonymously, so winning repeatedly speaks to the talent of the recipients.