Dear painters who yearn for that $60,000 Pew Fellowship in the Arts. This year, to apply you must fire up your computer. Even the images are to be sent with the applications online.
What a relief from copying, pasting and mailing!
Turns out this is a first step for Pew.
“It is kind of a test run. we thought we would just start with the painters so we could determine any problems, eliminate as many moving pieces as possible,” said Melissa Franklin, director of the fellowships.
In the course of converting to digital technology, Pew last year allowed Crafts to submit work samples on discs. Surprisingly, only about a third or a quarter of the applicants, however, used discs. “I was surprised at how many people still had slides.”
The last customer that that rents slide projectors from Pew’s supplier is Pew! “It’s almost quaint,” said Franklin. “We are only one they hold slide projectors for.”
This year’s applicants in the category of Folk and Traditional Arts may submit their images on a disc.
Looking to the future, Franklin expects the next round of applications to be totally digital, except Pew will take writing samples in hard copy and some other categories on discs. The differences reflect the needs of categories–like choreography and music (although she did add uploading music as MP3s was a possibility for the future).
Here’s the link to the applications:
http://www.pewarts.org/apply.html
