Provincetown's Fine Arts Work Center Launches Native Artist Residency

By Elena Vasquez

The Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts, will launch a new residency for Native artists next spring, backed by $10,000 from the Walker Youngbird Foundation. The Walker Youngbird Native Artist Residency runs four weeks, from May 23 to June 19, and brings one Native artist to the storied Cape Cod institution.

What does the resident receive?

The inaugural year carries a $10,000 commitment from the foundation. Of that, $2,500 goes directly to the artist as a stipend. The resident also gets:

• a private apartment for the full four weeks
• a 400-square-foot studio
• access to FAWC's broader creative community
• a closing public program

"Provincetown is an epicenter for art in the United States," Reid Walker, the foundation's founder, told ARTnews. "We couldn't think of a better spot than Provincetown to immerse a Native artist in a community that has such a long history, established presence, and great framework."

Who is behind the program?

FAWC was founded in 1968 by a group of artists including Robert Motherwell. Its model gives artists and writers time and space to work without pressure to produce. In 2024, the Motherwell estate gave $200,000 to support the organization's months-long fellowship program and its shorter summer workshops and residencies.

FAWC executive director Sharon Polli said the shorter programs, which run two weeks to a month, help the center "reach a lot of artists that might not be able to spend seven months here and might need different things at different stages of their career."

Polli said she had spent recent years "thinking about how we can open up that legacy—open up the opportunity to be in this place that sits at the epicenter of such an important art history—to the widest possible network of artists and writers who could really benefit from being in this landscape." Staff began asking "whose voices are missing and who might we most want to reach—and we can't do that alone," she said, adding that "there was no one better positioned to help us do that with intention, with care, and with real thought than Reid and his team."

Whatever the length of stay, Polli said, the goal is "the opportunity to take risks, to experiment, to pilot new things and maybe fail, and to take their work in surprising new directions." She called unrestricted time and space "the secret sauce of our artist residencies."

How does this fit the foundation's track record?

The Provincetown residency is the Walker Youngbird Foundation's latest move in supporting Indigenous artists. Earlier this year, the foundation gave $50,000 to launch Native Neon, a residency placing a Native artist at Lite Brite Neon Studio in Kingston, New York, to produce a work in neon. That funding covered production costs, travel and lodging, plus a $10,000 artist stipend — four times the stipend offered in the inaugural Provincetown year.

"Our work really focuses on artists at inflection points, points where they are about to make a move into a new direction or jump into a bigger part of their career," Walker said. "From my discussions with Native American artists who have done residencies, I've heard how important that time is—to reflect, to think about new ideas and new possibilities."

He added: "The community that Fine Arts Work Center offers is important. It's not just four weeks. It's going to hopefully be a community that they will take with them long after they leave Provincetown."

Who can apply, and who decides?

Applications open October 26. The residency is open to emerging and mid-career Native and Indigenous artists working in any medium. Applicants must be 18 or older and live in the US or Canada.

Walker will serve on the selection committee alongside Mala Iqbal, an artist who chairs FAWC's visual arts committee, and artist Duane Slick (Meskwaki and Ho-Chunk), a past FAWC fellow and current FAWC trustee. Per a release, the committee will select one artist "based on the strength and vision of the artist's work and the potential for the residency to meaningfully advance their practice."

"Native art is not just a sidebar in contemporary art; it's a major foundational element, and it should be participating in the conversations that happen in art hot spots like Provincetown," Walker said. The October 26 application deadline will show how many artists agree.