Impact Initiatives

3 women of varying ages and ethnicities sit at a round table facing another woman who is speaking — *ArtTable members leading a discussion at the ArtTable New York Career Roundtable Program.*

Impact Initiatives

Since 1980, ArtTable has been working to advance the professional leadership of women and nonbinary professionals in the visual arts. Through various programs, we educate and inform members and the public about significant developments and issues in the visual arts, support dialogue, and promote the evolving leadership role of women and nonbinary professionals in the arts. For a full description of ArtTable’s Impact Initiatives, click here.

In 2022, ArtTable established the Impact Initiatives Fund in Honor of Meg Perlman. This fund directly impacts our National Fellowship, Pay Equity Project, and Career Roundtable Initiatives, providing funding for our diversity, equity, inclusivity, and accessibility programming, and provides education and mentoring opportunities for early-career women and nonbinary professionals in our Affiliate Membership Program. Please help us to make a difference by contributing to this fund.

Click here to see ArtTable’s Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility Action Plan, approved by ArtTable’s Board of Directors in May of 2021, and here to see ArtTable’s Strategic Plan for 2024-2027.

ArtTable Fellowship Program

ArtTable’s Fellowship Program began in 2000 to address the marked lack of diversity in arts employment. This impactful program provides quality real work experiences and mentorship to women and nonbinary emerging professionals from backgrounds generally underrepresented in the visual arts field. During the paid, five-to-eight-week summer program, the fellows will work closely with established leaders in the field to gain exposure to various professional activities at leading museums and art organizations. Fellows also receive one-on-one mentoring from leading professionals who are ArtTable members and are specialized in their areas of interest.

Through the generous support of individuals, foundations, corporations, and government agencies, ArtTable has supported 183 women and nonbinary fellows, partnered with a total of 98 leading art organizations nationwide so far, and dispersed over $665,000 since the Fellowship’s inception.

The program is open to emerging art professionals who self-identify as women or nonbinary. Applicants must be members of an underrepresented group, including but not limited to cultural, racial, ethnic, and/or socio-economic backgrounds historically underrepresented in the field. Applicants may be enrolled in undergraduate, graduate, or pre/post-doc programs or have recently graduated. Individuals returning to the field, especially after a period of absence due to circumstances such as elder care, early parenting, or military service, are encouraged to apply.

2025 ArtTable Fellowship Program

Applications are now open for Host Organizations interested in hosting an ArtTable Fellow for Summer 2025. Applications are due by January 14, 2025.

Applications for Fellows will open in February 2025. Email membership@arttable.org if you have any questions about the Fellowship program.

Apply to Host a Fellow

2025 Fellowship Supporters

The ArtTable Fellowship Program is made possible thanks to the invaluable help of the following supporters:

Julie Armistead
Lila Harnett, Founder of ArtTable in 1980
Lenore G. Tawney Foundation
Leon Polk Smith Foundation

We are grateful for the support from The National Endowment for the Arts which has approved ArtTable for a grant to support the 2024 – 2025 ArtTable Fellowship Program.

Past Fellows

Read more about ArtTable’s previous fellows and the projects they worked on here.

Press Releases

June 4, 2024 – 2024 ArtTable Fellows Announced!

February 21, 2024 – ArtTable Launches 2024 National Fellowship Program

News From Our Fellows

Click here for updates from past ArtTable fellows.

“Whitney Museum Picks Marcela Guerrero, Drew Sawyer to Curate 2026 Whitney Biennial”

Marcela Guerrero participated in the ArtTable Fellowship program in 2005 at Catharine Clark Gallery.

Career Development Roundtable

ArtTable members Whitney Donhauser and Pauline Willis speaking to students at ArtTable's 2017 Career Roundtable. — *ArtTable members Whitney Donhauser and Pauline Willis speaking to students at ArtTable’s 2017 Career Roundtable. Photo Courtesy of Fashion Institute of Technology.*

In 2009 ArtTable launched the Career Development Roundtable, one of our longest-standing and most impactful career mentoring programs, influencing the career paths of more than 2,000 students and emerging professionals.

The program, currently hosted virtually over the course of two days, is designed to give emerging leaders in arts administration, art business, museum studies, art history, curatorial studies, and arts internships an experience to meet with professionals in the visual arts to discuss career opportunities.

Every year participants have the opportunity to gather around selected tables for open and engaged conversations with leading women and nonbinary professionals, to learn about their diverse career paths and experiences, to gain insights and advice for their own career development, and to network and build future relationships with peers and mentors. This is also an opportunity for ArtTable members and the community to participate in a mentoring role.

2024 Career Development Roundtable Partnership:

Help us to expand this program

Pay Equity

Starting in fall of 2022, ArtTable conducted a survey to better understand compensation—and compensation inequity—in the arts, with a particular focus on gender and compensation.

Data in this area is woefully inaccessible and incomplete, and we seek to remedy some of these problems and contribute valuable knowledge to our community. Through this data collection, ArtTable was able to present its findings through 3 virtual workshops:

November 2023 | “The Cost of Working in the Arts”
February 2024 | “The Intersectionality of Race and Gender in the Artistic Labor Market”
May 2024 | “Parenting in the Artistic Labor Market: Results from ArtTable’s Pay Equity Survey”

The workshops provided a mechanism to distribute results through conversation and collaboration advancing solutions and working toward gender parity. All sessions were free, open to the public, and supported through donations to ArtTable’s Impact Initiatives Fund.

The final report on ArtTable’s Pay Equity project, which incorporates all feedback from our virtual workshops, is now available free of charge. ArtTable members can also access the results through the membership portal.

This project was made possible by individuals, organizations, and grants that support our Impact Initiatives programs. We appreciate your support to continue this important work.

Help us to expand on this project