Inaugural Mike Kelley Endowed Scholarship

ArtCenter’s Graduate Art Program is delighted to announce that a full scholarship will be awarded to an incoming candidate pursuing an MFA in the fall of 2024. The Mike Kelley Endowed Scholarship is the result of Grad Art’s Free Grad Art Initiative (est. 2018) and its 2022 Artists for ArtCenter auction of works by faculty and alumni (Stan Douglas, Sharon Lockhart, Ivan Morley, Joshua Nathanson, Laura Owens, Sterling Ruby, Diana Thater, among others) which raised the 660,000 USD that became seed money for this endowment. The Mike Kelley Foundation for the Arts then stepped up with a 100,000 USD donation and the extraordinary pledge to match additional donations until the endowed fund reached its goal of one million USD—and five members of ArtCenter’s Board of Trustees quickly rose to the occasion.

The Graduate Art Program also awards the Balfour-Edwards full scholarship. In addition to other institutional funding, we also award the Gavlak-Blumberg and the Birchby half scholarships. We are thrilled to be able to extend this financial support to outstanding MFA candidates who otherwise might not be able to experience one of the best graduate educations in the world: Graduate Art at ArtCenter.

*Image above: Mike Kelley, pictured at right in black, taught in the Graduate Fine Art department at ArtCenter College of Design from 1986 until 2006.