Pro Helvetia supports and promotes...
Additional information, application deadlines, documentation
Discipline areas
- Visual Arts
- Film
- Music
- Literature and the humanities
- Theatre
- Dance
- Culture & Society
- International
- Inter- and Multidisciplinary Projects
Guide for Applicants 2003 (PDF file 188K)
Visual arts
Objectives
The Visual Arts area includes: the fine arts, design, New Media, photography, video, architecture and folk art. In the Visual Arts sector, Pro Helvetia promotes artistic exchange, efforts to bring Swiss art to foreign audiences and interregional artistic dialogue in Switzerland; it also fosters worldwide cooperation with museums, galleries and cultural centres, and contributes to touring exhibitions.
Activities
Exhibitions at home and abroad
Pro Helvetia awards grants with a view to enabling Swiss artists to show their work abroad. At home it supports exhibitions that foster exchange among the linguistic regions and are of nationwide interest.
Grants are restricted to transport and insurance costs and, in the case of installations and performance art, to travelling expenses and the hiring of equipment. The following types of events can be considered:
- solo exhibitions and retrospectives;
- group exhibitions;
- thematic exhibitions.
Art publications and art journals
Pro Helvetia awards printing subsidies or translation grants for publications (including CD-ROM, DVD or on-line publications). The publication must appear under a recognised publisher’s imprint and be distributed professionally.
Grants can be awarded for:
- catalogues raisonnés and monographs;
- thematic publications with an art-historical link to Switzerland;
- the start-up of Swiss art journals; special issues on Swiss art.
Exchanges
Pro Helvetia promotes contact and exchange between Swiss and foreign artists, art historians or architects.
Grants can be awarded for:
- active participation by Swiss citizens in events abroad;
- active participation by foreign cultural practitioners in events in Switzerland with close thematic links to Swiss culture;
- study visits to Switzerland by foreign scholars researching cultural aspects of Switzerland.
Intercultural dialogue
Promoting encounter with cultures and cultural practitioners from economically disadvantaged countries cut off from the international distribution system and art market (e.g. regions in the southern hemisphere, indigenous cultures) is one of Pro Helvetia’s priority areas.
In the Visual Arts sector Pro Helvetia can support:
- group exhibitions featuring artists from remote or economically disadvantaged regions of Switzerland;
- exhibitions and workshops in economically disadvantaged regions if devised and realised together with Swiss artists;
- studio visits to Switzerland ranging from six weeks to a maximum of six months for artists from the southern hemisphere.
Criteria
The general Pro Helvetia criteria apply. Moreover, Pro Helvetia can only consider projects sponsored by public cultural institutions or undertaken by private institutions/individuals as non-commercial ventures.
Restrictions
The general exclusionary criteria apply.
Moreover, in the Visual Arts sector grants cannot be awarded for the following:
- the creation of new works (province of the Federal Office of Culture);
- scholarships (province of the municipalities, cantons and, at the federal level, the Federal Office of Culture);
- artists’ fees, materials or local expenses incurred by event organisers;
- exhibition catalogues.
Procedural rules
When submitting an application, please use the appropriate application form (“Contributions to exhibitions”, in G/F/I/E; “Contributions to publications on visual art”, in G/F/E; “Contributions to travelling exhibitions”, in G/F/E) and consult the respective and additional information sheets (“Grants for South/North exhibitions, Artist-in-Residence Programmes”, in G/F/I/E; “Grants for exchanges”, in G/F/I/E) under category «Forms and information sheets».
