Guide to the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation
Online Application
US & Canada 2024 Competition
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Guide to the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Online Application Page
Overview ……………………………………………………………………………… 1
Section One – Application Information ………………………………………………… 1
Section Two – Addresses ……………………………………………………………... 2
Section Three – References …………………………………………………………… 2
Section Four – Positions ………………………………………………………………. 3
Section Five – Languages ……………………………………………………………… 3
Section Six – Organizations …………………………………………………………… 3
Section Seven – Education …………………………………………………………….. 4
Section Eight – Supporting Documents ………………………………………………. 4
Career Narrative ………………………………………………………………. 4
List of Work ……………………………………………………………………. 4
Statement of Plans …………………………………………………………….. 5
Submitting (uploading) the three supporting documents …………….......... 5
Final submission of the completed application …………………………………….. 6
Submission of work examples in support of your application ……………………. 6
Types of work examples to submit …………………………………………. 7
Return of photography work examples ………………………………………… 8
Notification of application results …………………………………………………… 10
Helpful hints ….……………………………………………………………………….. 10
Guide to the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Online Application
Overview
The competition is open only to citizens and permanent residents of the United States and
Canada. All applicants must be citizens or permanent residents of the U.S. or Canada at
the time of application.
When you create your application account, you must provide the following data: your name, date
of birth, place of birth, gender (optional), institutional affiliation, and citizenship. If you are self-
employed or if you are an independent artist/writer/scholar and not affiliated with a company,
university, or institution, you may enter “none,” “not applicable,” or “NA” in the
institution/company field. If you are not a native-born citizen of the U.S. or Canada, you must
provide your permanent residency or naturalization information in the “Citizenship Note” field.
The application form, which is completed and submitted electronically, is composed of eight
sections:
• Application Information
• Addresses
• References
• Positions
• Languages
• Organizations
• Education
• Supporting Documents
You may complete the various sections in any order you wish. You may return to any part of
the application to make changes, if necessary, until you submit the completed application to the
Foundation. When all the required information has been provided, you must submit the
application by selecting the "Final Submit" button no later than the deadline, September 21
(11:59 pm EDT). Applications received later than September 21 will not be accepted.
Please focus your application on one project only. Applications that attempt to span too many
disparate disciplines or include too many objectives are less competitive than those that propose
a balanced, focused goal.
An applicant proposing a co-authored or co-created project must submit a joint application along
with the other person; that is, each person must submit a separate application, indicating on each
application that you are applying jointly.
Section One – Application Information
In this section of the application, you are required to enter information about your project:
Project Title and Project Field(s).
If you have a personal website(s), you should enter the address (URL) in the Website field(s).
Please make sure that you enter a valid web address (e.g., https://www.your-name.com) and not
an email address (e.g., your-name@email.com).
Page 1 of 10 version 13.0, August 2023
Most applications are from individual applicants, but we do accept joint applications. Joint
applicants usually conceive of a project together and work equally on a project. If they are
awarded the Fellowship, both are named Fellows and share one award. If you are applying
jointly with another applicant, enter the name of the person in the “Joint Applicant Name” field.
Please note that if two applicants are applying jointly, each person must submit a separate
application, indicating on each application that you are applying jointly. We do not accept
applications from more than two persons working together.
An applicant will often work with others in the pursuit of their proposed projects. In those
instances, the collaborative nature of the project is merely discussed in the statement of plans,
and the applicant applies as an individual. However, if the nature of a project is such that there
are two equal contributors to the project, it is likely that both individuals should apply jointly. If
you have any questions regarding joint applications, please contact our program officer at
competition@gf.org.
When you have finished entering the required information in this section of the application,
make sure you indicate that it is complete by selecting the Acknowledge button.
Section Two – Addresses
In this section of the application, you are required to provide your contact information: home
address or office address, email addresses, telephone numbers, etc. Make sure that you indicate
whether your home or office is your preferred contact address.
The Foundation will contact applicants only via email. To ensure that spam-filtering software
does not block our emails, you should add the Foundation’s domains, @gf.org and
@mail.gf.org, to your address book or approved contacts list.
Also, you are asked to provide the name and address information for an alternate contact – for
example, a spouse, relative, friend, etc. We will only use this information to contact you in case
we are unable to reach you via your home or office information. Please do not enter your own
name and contact information in this field.
When you have finished entering the required information in this section of the application,
make sure you indicate that it is complete by selecting the Acknowledge button.
Section Three – References
In this section, you are asked to provide the names and full contact information for up to four
persons who are familiar with your work and can comment on your abilities, especially in
relation to your project proposal. Those who are familiar with your recent work and can
comment on the whole course of your career will make the best references. Individuals who have
a business or financial interest in your work – such as dealers, agents, and editors – would not be
the most impartial references to provide and would not be considered especially useful. Please
request the permission of each person whom you list as a reference before so listing them. It is
your responsibility, not the Foundation’s, to ensure the accuracy of a reference's email or mailing
address.
Page 2 of 10 version 13.0, August 2023
The Foundation will contact all references only via email. Reference letter requests will be
sent out in mid-November. We do not accept reference letters from dossier services such as
Interfolio.
To ensure that spam-filtering software does not block our emails to your references you should
instruct your references to add the Foundation’s domains, @gf.org and @mail.gf.org, to
their address books or approved lists.
All statements by references to the Foundation are held in the strictest confidence. Consequently,
you will not be contacted regarding the status of your references.
When you have finished entering the required information in this section of the application,
make sure you indicate that it is complete by selecting the Acknowledge button.
Section Four – Positions
In this section, you may provide information about positions you hold or have held in past years:
i.e., your employment or job history. The list of positions need not be exhaustive, and may be
professional, academic, administrative, or business in nature. Free-lance work or self-
employment may be listed as well. If you have no positions to list, you may leave this section
blank. If you hold an academic position, please list your job title in full as well as the name of the
relevant academic department.
When you have finished entering whatever information you wish to provide, make sure you
indicate that this section is complete (even if it’s blank) by selecting the Acknowledge button.
Section Five – Languages
You may enter information about your foreign language skills and proficiency in this section of
the application (for example, Spanish, French, Arabic, ASL, etc.). If you have no information to
enter, you may leave this section blank.
When you have finished entering whatever information you wish to provide, make sure you
indicate that this section is complete (even if it’s blank) by selecting the Acknowledge button.
Section Six – Organizations
You may enter information about professional organizations, associations, or societies of which
you are a member. For example, if you have membership in an art society or learned society,
enter the information. Do not put any job positions you have held in the Organizations section.
If you are not a member of any type of professional organization, simply leave this section blank.
Do not include social or casual memberships.
When you have finished entering whatever information you wish to provide, make sure you
indicate that this section is complete (even if it’s blank) by selecting the Acknowledge button.
Page 3 of 10 version 13.0, August 2023
Section Seven – Education
Please provide information about your educational history (i.e., institutions, dates of attendance,
levels, degrees, etc.). When you have finished entering your data, make sure that you indicate
that this section is complete by selecting the Acknowledge button.
Section Eight – Supporting Documents
You are required to submit three supplementary statements in PDF format:
• Career Narrative
• List of Work
• Statement of Plans
Documents MUST be in PDF format, unsecured (not password-protected), and all pages
should be Letter-Size (8.5” x 11”) and in portrait orientation. The initial view for all three
documents should be set to “Page Only” not “Bookmarks Panel and Page.” Use only
standard fonts (Arial, Times New Roman, Georgia, etc.). Font size should be 12-point. Line
spacing and margin size for all documents are your choice. Please make sure that all
scanned PDFs are in portrait orientation. A PDF document with a file size equal to or
greater than 3 MB cannot be uploaded. You may wish to examine your documents'
properties before you upload them.
If you need assistance converting the supporting documents to PDFs, please consult the Helpful
hints section of this guide on page 9.
Career Narrative
The Career Narrative is a brief prose account of your career, describing your previous
accomplishments. Please do not substitute a resume. It should mention prizes, honors, and
significant grants or fellowships that you have held or now hold, showing the grantor and the
inclusive dates of each award. There is no page limit for the career narrative; however, most are
no more than three to four pages in length.
List of Work
The List of Work is a chronological, comprehensive list of your work. It is NOT the list of
work examples that you may be later submitting in support of your application.
If you are a scholar, scientist, or writer, the list should reflect your publications. For books,
please provide exact titles, names of publishers, and dates and places of publication. Playwrights
should also include a list of productions. Scholars and scientists may provide hyperlinks to
listed publications.
If you are an artist or photographer, please include a chronological list of exhibitions or shows
(citing dates and places), as well as a list of collections in which your work is represented.
Forthcoming shows may also be mentioned. Work exhibited on websites and blogs alone does
not constitute a sufficient record of accomplishment for our competition.
Page 4 of 10 version 13.0, August 2023
Choreographers should submit a list of performances, including locations and dates.
Composers should submit a chronological list of compositions, citing titles and dates; a list of
your published compositions, citing the names of publishers and the dates of publications; and a
list of recordings. First public performances should also be listed, giving names of performers
and dates.
Film or video makers should submit a chronological list of films and/or videos, citing titles and
dates of completion, and dates and places of major public showings of each.
Statement of Plans
The Statement of Plans is a concise description of the project you plan to work on during the
Fellowship period. Applicants in science or scholarship should provide a detailed, but concise,
plan of research, not exceeding three pages in length. Please note that, although it is common for
scientific proposals to be written in first-person plural, we ask that the statement of plans be
written in first-person singular. It should also be clear that the proposed project is indeed an
individual initiative, and not a group-authored project. Group projects will not be considered.
Applicants in the arts should submit a brief statement of plans describing the proposed artistic
project, not exceeding three pages in length.
Financial considerations do not play a part in our evaluations, and applicants should not include a
budget in the statement of plans. When candidates are selected as Fellows, they are then asked to
submit budget information for their projects.
In making our inquiries on your behalf, we make available to each person you name as reference
only a copy of your Statement of Plans; consequently, the document must be self-contained. The
Statement of Plans is the only part of the application that is accessible to references and should
not require any additional information or attachments sent along with it to be understood (hence,
self-contained).
Submitting (uploading) the three supporting documents
As mentioned above, the three supporting documents must be in PDF format in order to be
uploaded to your application. It is required that you submit all three documents. Applications
missing documents will not be processed. The instructions on how to upload the documents are
as follows:
1. Select Browse (or, Choose File, depending on your specific browser) to locate each of the
PDF documents you wish to submit.
2. When you have selected the PDF documents select Upload Files to save the documents with
your application.
Lastly, when you have uploaded all three of your supporting documents, make sure that you
indicate that this section is complete by selecting the Acknowledge button.
Page 5 of 10 version 13.0, August 2023
Final submission of the completed application
When you have completed and acknowledged all eight sections of the application, you will be
ready to submit your application to the Foundation for consideration. Acknowledged sections are
indicated by small check marks next to the section names on your application’s home page.
If a section is not acknowledged, enter the section, and acknowledge it. If you are unable to
acknowledge the section, you have most likely missed filling out a required data field.
If there is a required data field that must be completed but is not applicable, you may enter
“none,” “n/a” or “NA.” Non-required data fields may be left blank.
Submit your completed application by accessing the Review and Submit section. Read the text
and acknowledge that you have reviewed your application for accuracy, then click the Final
Submit button. If you would like a PDF copy of all the data that you provided on your
application, you can download it in this section. (Note that this PDF copy of your application
will not actually include the three supporting document PDFs, which you presumably already
have in your possession.)
Submission of work examples in support of your application
After your application is submitted, you may also receive a separate email later with instructions
about when to submit examples of your work. Please do not submit work examples until you
receive these further instructions.
• Applicants in science need not submit examples of their work.
• Applicants in scholarship should submit examples of previous work, following the
procedures described below.
• Applicants in all the arts must submit examples of previous work in order for their
applications to receive full consideration by our advisers. If you do not submit
examples, you will not receive consideration.
Our email regarding submission of examples will instruct you to log in to our Work Example
Submission webpage. Follow the directions on the webpage to upload the digital files and/or
links that you are submitting in support of your application.
Applicants for the 2024 competition should submit all work samples to the Foundation no later
than November 17, 2023.
After you final-submit your work examples, you will receive an email confirmation listing the
work examples that you submitted.
If you do not receive an acknowledgment of the receipt of your submitted work within a
reasonable time, please contact the Foundation at competition@gf.org.
Page 6 of 10 version 13.0, August 2023
Types of work examples to submit
Recent work is generally the most pertinent. Applicants who are not directly covered in the
following categories should follow the procedure outlined for the category closest to their own.
You should not exclusively submit examples that are co-created, co-directed, etc., unless you are
applying jointly with another person. For us to properly evaluate your application as an
individual artist, writer or scholar, most of your submitted work examples should not be jointly
created works.
Painters, sculptors, and graphic artists should submit no more than twenty digital images of
recent works (e.g., from the last five years). You may include different views of individual
pieces if you wish. (Please note that separate images showing different views of an individual
piece all count towards the twenty-image limit.) Each image should be in JPEG or PNG format.
We prefer the images to be uploaded in descending chronological order, that is, from most
recent to the oldest work, but this is not mandatory. For example, photographers who prefer
their images to be viewed in a certain order should upload the images in the sequence that they
wish them to be viewed.
Installation or new media artists may submit samples as digital files or online links (follow
instructions below for film and video makers).
All applicants in fine arts and photography should have a substantial record of gallery exhibitions
to their credit, and a substantial list of collections in which their work is represented.
Scholars should submit examples of published books in PDF format; do not submit journal
articles; edited volumes, book chapters or essays. Submit no more than three different titles.
Poets, playwrights, screenwriters, and writers of fiction and general nonfiction must submit
examples of published books, both as uploaded PDF files and as physical copies (hardcover or
paperback) mailed to the Foundation. You may submit no more than three different titles, and
you should mail two copies per title. Playwrights and screenwriters are permitted to submit
unpublished manuscripts since plays and screenplays are not always published. Books and
manuscripts will not be returned.
Published writing not regarded as appropriate includes self-published works, publications for
which the author has paid, and publications by publishers who do not engage in a process of crit-
ical review of submitted work. In addition, genre work (e.g., mysteries, romance, fantasy, etc.) is
considered not competitive. We do not consider children’s or young adult books.
Whenever possible, please print out the confirmation email that is sent to you upon final submis-
sion of your online registry and include it in the package with your books. Please address your
Page 7 of 10 version 13.0, August 2023
package in the following manner:
Attn: Work Examples/Creative Writing
John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation
90 Park Avenue
33rd Floor
New York, NY 10016
If you are in the New York area, you may drop off your package in person, Monday-Friday, 10
am to 4 pm, via the Messenger Center at 90 Park Avenue. The security desk in the building
lobby can direct you to the messenger center.
For all writers, if you have mainly published in periodicals, or on websites, it might be premature
for you to apply here at this stage of your career, given the rigorous nature of our competition.
Photographers should submit no more than twenty digital images (follow the same instructions
above for painters, sculptors, and graphic artists). Photographers may also submit photography
books as PDF files (no more than three separate titles). In addition to the required digital
images/book PDFs, photographers may submit physical prints of the images and physical copies
of the photography books. Any physical prints that are submitted should match the digital images
that are uploaded, and the same for any photography books that are submitted.
Please print out the confirmation email that is issued to you upon final submission of your work
examples registry and include it in your portfolio. Please address your package in the following
manner:
Attn: Work Examples/Photography
John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation
90 Park Avenue
33rd Floor
New York, NY 10016
Your prints may be mounted or unmounted and should be no longer than 32 inches along the
largest dimension. The total weight of your prints (including the shipping container) should not
exceed 40 pounds. If your prints are normally displayed at a larger size, you may include an ex-
planatory note. Each photograph should be labeled on the back with your name and the title and
date of the work.
Portfolios which exceed these requirements will not be accepted. They will be disqualified
and returned at your own expense.
If you are in the New York area, you may drop off your portfolio in person, Monday-Friday, 10
am to 4 pm, via the Messenger Center at 90 Park Avenue. The security desk in the building lobby
can direct you to the Messenger Center.
Page 8 of 10 version 13.0, August 2023
If you would like your prints and photography books to be returned, the Foundation will re-
turn them via FedEx, UPS, or in-person pickup for applicants in the New York area. Please en-
close a return FedEx or UPS shipping label in the package with your work examples (preferred)
or enclose a note with your return address and FedEx or UPS account number.
Theatre or performance artists may submit videos of your work via online links or digital files
(follow instructions below for film and video makers).
Composers may submit three recent full-length works as digital files or online links, along with
accompanying PDF scores if the compositions are notated. Whenever possible, the scores and
the recordings should be for the same works.
Film and video makers should submit no more than three films or video works as digital files or
online links. You should not submit more than one example that is co-created, co-directed, etc.,
if you are applying as an individual filmmaker or video artist. Subtitles should be provided for
all non-English language films.
Specific cue points may be provided for film or video submissions when you register the work
online, but applicants should submit full-length works whenever possible. Trailers should not
be submitted.
Choreographers should submit no more than three examples of choreographic works, as digital
files or links, following the same instructions above for film and video makers.
*****************
At the conclusion of the competition, the digital files will be discarded.
Page 9 of 10 version 13.0, August 2023
Notification of application results
Applicants will be notified in April 2024 of the official results via email.
Helpful hints
If you are unable to acknowledge a section of the application, make certain that all required data
fields have been completed for that section.
Converting supporting documents to PDF format: Applicants with Apple (Mac OS) computers
can usually convert documents to PDF format by selecting the “Save as PDF” option in the Print
menu. Current versions of MS Word (Office 2010 and above) have a “Save to PDF” option, as
well. Commercial products such as Adobe Acrobat Professional will also allow the creation of
PDF files. Applicants with PCs (Microsoft Windows) can also use free websites such as
https://xodo.com/word-to-pdf, https://gonitro.com/word-to-pdf or use Google to find similar
websites to convert documents to PDFs. The Foundation neither reviews, endorses, nor controls
the content and accuracy of these websites, and therefore cannot be responsible for their content
and accuracy. Your use of these websites is at your sole risk.
The Foundation cannot offer any support for the creation of PDFs. Documents must be
unsecured (not password protected) and pages should be Letter-Size (8.5” x 11”) and
portrait orientation. Use only standard fonts (e.g., Arial, Times New Roman, Georgia,
etc.). Font size should be 12-point. Line spacing and margin size are your choice. Please
make sure that all scanned PDFs are in portrait orientation.
If you have any questions not covered here, feel free to email the Foundation's program officer at
competition@gf.org.
Page 10 of 10 version 13.0, August 2023
