Programs » Publication Grants

WYETH FOUNDATION FOR AMERICAN ART PUBLICATION GRANT

Background and Recent Winners

The Wyeth Foundation for American Art supports the publication of books on American art through the Wyeth Foundation for American Art Publication Grant, administered by CAA. For this grant program, “American art” is defined as art created in the United States, Canada, and Mexico.

DUE DATE

Annual deadline of September 15

Eligibility

Applications are considered only for book-length scholarly manuscripts in the history of American art that are under contract for publication. Applications are by the publisher, not the author. Awards are open to publishers and authors of all nations. Commercial, university, and museum presses are all eligible to apply, but must be institutional CAA members. University presses can apply under the CAA membership of their university.   

We no longer require applicant authors to have CAA membership to apply, but an account number is still required to sign into our grant portal (non-members can create an account through our member portal). Authors who receive the grant will also receive one year of CAA membership gratis. Self-published manuscripts are not eligible for this grant. 

Eligible Books

Excluded from consideration are excavation or other technical reports, articles, previously published works (including collections of previously published essays), and congress proceedings. Museum exhibition or collection catalogues containing substantial scholarship are eligible. High scholarly and intellectual merit is the sine qua non for an award; however, the jury is also attentive to the following criteria:

• Topics with a naturally small market or unusually high expenses
• Works by disadvantaged scholars, including those at the earlier stages of a career, or by younger scholars or curators; or issued by smaller museums; or by or about underserved constituencies
• Books that break new ground, contribute new scholarship, or publish important primary-source material
• Beautiful books that increase the audience for American art

A project that has been rejected for grant may not be resubmitted to the same grant, except in a rare case where substantial revision has been made to the material, and the publisher has so noted in the application. At its discretion, the jury may decline to review the resubmitted application.

Checklist

Applications must be submitted by the publisher; applications submitted by authors will not be accepted. The publisher gathers all materials listed in the checklist below and submits them via the online application portal, powered by the Conference Exchange.  

• Publisher’s cover letter, describing the importance of the work and detailing for what purpose the grant is needed, including a basic budget or cost estimate 
• Partial manuscript, including: 
• Table of contents 
• Introduction 
• Sample chapter or partial chapters 
• Picture list (complete or representative) 
• Sample images (include figure numbers and captions) 
• Sample bibliography (no more than five pages)
• Manuscript reviews: Two or more substantive, analytical peer reviews or readers’ reports of the manuscript, addressing originality, significance of the scholarly contribution, and quality of the research and prose, and written by reviewers who are authorities on the material of the book. Note that readers’ reports are a significant and influential element of the grant application. Reviews are anonymous to the author but should include the name of the reviewer and date of review for the benefit of the jury (to be kept confidential) and should not be more than three years old. The author’s response to the reports should be signed and included with the application, so that the current state of the manuscript is made clear. If the author’s response is older than one year, a state-of-progress report should be included. Reports written by the author’s dissertation adviser or other interested parties, such as a series editor, are ineligible for application to this award. 
• Author’s curriculum vitae (include dates of degrees and page numbers of published articles) 
• Narrative description or abstract of the book (two pages maximum) 
• Author’s response to (anonymous) peer reviews (dated, with state-of-progress report if older than one year) 

PORTAL

• Only an Individual CAA Member ID or non-member CAA ID will allow you to sign into the submission forms. If you do not have an ID, please contact our membership department.
• Institutional Member IDs can not be used to create a submission. 
• If you are having trouble logging in, try a different browser. We recommend Chrome to alleviate login issues.
• Make sure to start your application well in advance to avoid last-minute technical issues.

Contact

Questions? Please contact Cali Buckley, Manager of Grants and Awards & Director of the CAA-Getty International Program, at cbuckley@collegeart.org.