Fine Arts Works Center

The Fine Arts Work Center is a non-profit enterprise devoted to encouraging the growth and development of emerging visual artists and writers through residency programs, to the propagation of aesthetic values and experience, and to the restoration of the year-round vitality of the historic art colony of Provincetown, Massachusetts. The Work Center was founded in 1968 by a group of American artists and writers to support promising individuals in the early stages of their creative careers. The Work Center, whose founders included Stanley Kunitz, Robert Motherwell, Myron Stout and Jack Tworkov, annually offers ten writers and ten visual artists seven-month residencies, including a work area and a monthly stipend. The Center also offers a Master of Fine Arts degree in collaboration with the Massachusetts College of Art and Design, seasonal programs, and readings and other events. The Center was awarded a 2010 National Endowment for the Arts Access to Artistic Excellence grant to support the Winter Fellowship program.

The Center’s website summarizes the importance of the Center in this way:

The Fine Arts Work Center … is a direct descendant of [the] rich cultural history [of Provincetown]. The Center is a nonprofit institution devoted to encouraging and supporting young artists and is built on the belief that freedom and community are the best means and natural conditions for artistic growth. The facilities of the Fine Arts Work Center have a unique and rich place in the history of modern American art and the Work Center Fellowship Program carries on in this tradition.

Notable former fellows include writers Michael Cunningham, Alice Fulton, Louise Glück, Denis Johnson, Yusef Komunyakaa, Jhumpa Lahiri, Susan Mitchell and Franz Wright; and visual artists Yun-Fei Ji, Sam Messer and Lisa Yuskavage.