Elizabeth Foundation for The Arts

Elizabeth Foundation for The Arts The three main programs at The Elizabeth Foundation for the arts are: EFA Studios, EFA Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop, and EFA Project Space.

The Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts is a 501(c)(3) public charity, incorporated in New York in 1992. EFA began as a small grant-giving organization. Beginning in 1993, the GIVA Program (Grants for Individuals in the Visual Arts) awarded grants to 107 exceptional artists over the course of nine years. In April 1994, the International Studio Program, a career-development residency, became a progra

m of EFA. In 2006 when the program could stand on its own, the now titled International Studio and Curatorial Program (ISCP) became an independent organization, and by 2008 had completed the move from the EFA Center to its own space in Brooklyn where it continues to thrive. In May 1998, EFA purchased a twelve-story building on West 39th Street in Manhattan, now known as the EFA Center. Working with capital funding from a private foundation, the building was converted into individual work-studios, a gallery space, and space reserved for a workshop. With the development of the EFA Center, EFA shifted its focus away from grant giving to provide longer-term, practical support for individual artists and foster dialogue between artists, art communities and the public. In autumn 1998, the EFA Studio Program selected its first artist members. Today, more than 89 professional artists work in the subsidized individual studios of the EFA Center community. In late 2005, EFA’s Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop Program opened, providing a crucial and affordable workspace, open to all artists who seek to learn and pursue their printmaking practice. The EFA Gallery hosted exhibitions from 2001–2008. It was re-launched as the EFA Project Space Program in September 2008 in order to function as more than just a gallery, providing a more collaborative approach and a broad scope of energetic projects and events that increase its reach to diverse New York communities. In 2017, EFA celebrated it's 25 year anniversary.

Join us this Saturday, January 31 from 4-6pm to celebrate the opening of the RBPMW 2025 Kahn Mason SIP Fellowship Exhibi...
01/29/2026

Join us this Saturday, January 31 from 4-6pm to celebrate the opening of the RBPMW 2025 Kahn Mason SIP Fellowship Exhibition .rbpmw 💫

January 31 – February 28, 2026

Blackburn Study Center

323 West 39th St., 2nd Fl

Featuring works by:

Serafina Ariel
Zalika Azim
June Canedo de Souza
E. Jane
Carly Mandel
Anna Ting Möller
Elle Pérez
Anne Wu

Each year, we open an exhibition by welcoming back Fellows from the previous cohort as we introduce a new roster of Fellows. We are delighted to welcome Alicia Mersy , Charmaine Bee, SHAN Wallace , Kearra Amaya Gopee , Cameron Granger , Diana Guerra , Brandon Foushée , and Claire Gilliam

We also extend our sincere thanks to this year’s jurors: Chantal Lee (New York Public Library) , E. Jane (’25 SIP Fellow) , Paige Laino (Practice Index) , and Sika Bonsu (Weeksville Heritage Center) ; and last year’s jurors: Marie Catalano (Educator and Independent Curator) , Sheldon Gooch (MoMA PS1) , Jon Santos (Common Space Studio) , Keli Safia Maksud (‘SIP Fellow)

This year marks the final year of Kahn | Mason funding for the Studio Immersive Project Fellowship. The Kahn | Mason SIP Fellowship is named in honor of avid printmakers and educators Emily Mason and Wolf Kahn, with partial funding provided by the Emily Mason | Alice Trumbull Mason Foundation and the Wolf Kahn Foundation. We are deeply grateful for their generous support, which has helped cultivate five cycles of this critical program.

EFA is pursuing an expansion of its 33-year program into Chelsea. Our bid to purchase 526 W 20th St. through a public/pr...
09/08/2025

EFA is pursuing an expansion of its 33-year program into Chelsea. Our bid to purchase 526 W 20th St. through a public/private partnership is a commitment to supporting artists and sustainable studio practices in Manhattan.

Without artists there is no Chelsea Arts District!

This thriving, creative hub fostered by Gloria and Raymond Naftali at the Chelsea Arts Building is essential to a creative ecosystem defining the district. We are grateful to Eagle Point Properties, City and State Representatives, and tenants support for this effort!


Summerworks is a month-long residency supported by Art Hub Copenhagen and Bikuben Foundation NY ☀️This year, four jury-s...
07/03/2025

Summerworks is a month-long residency supported by Art Hub Copenhagen and Bikuben Foundation NY ☀️

This year, four jury-selected artists (Javier Alvarez Sagredo , Zven Balslev , C Clement , and Henriette Heise ) will work in shared studios at EFA and the Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop .rbpmw

On July 23, 5-8 pm, they will host an open studio reception to the public to share their works and research.

This is the last week to view The Rain Don’t Mind curated by Deric Carner  at  💫The Rain Don’t Mind is a group exhibitio...
05/12/2025

This is the last week to view The Rain Don’t Mind curated by Deric Carner at 💫

The Rain Don’t Mind is a group exhibition exploring the complexity of violence and tragedy. It uses humor, glamour, and absurdity to approach heavy themes from unexpected angles.

Featuring works by EFA Member Artists Shimon Attie , Richard Barnes (alumni), Rhona Bitner Edgar Jerins Greg Kwiatek, Nazanin Noroozi , and Maria Rapicavoli the exhibition invites viewers to engage with narratives that resist simple interpretations, encouraging reflection on the ambiguity of life’s darker moments.

Image: Richard Barnes, Unabomber Cabin, 1998

04/04/2025
Our current exhibition ‘Tacit Knowledge: Paper as Practice in the Dieu Donné West Bay View Foundation Fellowship Program...
02/04/2025

Our current exhibition ‘Tacit Knowledge: Paper as Practice in the Dieu Donné West Bay View Foundation Fellowship Program’ in partnership with is on view until March 7 at EFA Gallery on the 3rd Floor! 💫

Featuring works by:
Anna Hendrick Karpatkin Benjamin
Katharine L. DeLamater
Candy Alexandra González
Jaz Graf
Lauren Krukowski .krukowski
SR Lejeune
Anela Ming-Yue Oh

Curated by Eliana Blechman

‘Tacit Knowledge’ celebrates seven years of Dieu Donné’s West Bay View Foundation Fellowship, an immersive studio mentorship for emerging papermakers to expand and enrich their artistic practices at Dieu Donné’s papermaking studios in Brooklyn, NY.

Applications for this immersive papermaking fellowship are now open, more info at

Image Credit: Anna Hendrick Karpatkin Benjamin, Prism Drawing 5, 2022, Colored pencil on abaca, 18 in x 24 inches.

09/12/2024

EFA Project Space is excited to announce a Workshop & Participatory Performance Series, “Gong(ฆ้อง) Gathering” by artist collective elekhlekha อีเหละเขละขละ! The series will run on select Tuesdays, September 17 - November 26, 2024 as Duo Sessions.

“Gong(ฆ้อง) Gathering: Workshop & Participatory Performance Series” is a series of workshops, collaborative sound-making, and participatory performances by artist collective inspired by a community gathering gong ensemble found throughout Southeast Asia.

Gong(ฆ้อง) Gathering is a platform for sharing, exchanging ideas, and collective conscious raising where elekhlekha invite guest artist collaborators .kana, , , and participants to collectively investigate and unfold Southeast Asia’s layers of political complexity through the continuity of oral and aural history and sound cultures’ lineage. We’ll dive into different roots and communities and learn their way of collaborative sound-making, ritual, history, and political complexity. We create our work out of the struggle of unlearning and relearning our history and looking to discover a common ground beyond the nation-state and define decolonized possibilities. Our public engagement is designed to be a learning experience, divided into three section sessions, each with one collaborator artist or collective with two parts, one workshop, and one participatory performance.

Click the link in bio to learn more about each session and sign up for the Duo Sessions!
RSVP required. Free and open to the public

Last but not least, we’re excited to welcome Cecil Howell to the new member cohort! ✨Howell is an artist and landscape a...
08/06/2024

Last but not least, we’re excited to welcome Cecil Howell to the new member cohort! ✨

Howell is an artist and landscape architect based in New York. Her work includes drawings, installations, essays, and the built environment. Across these media, she studies how we form and are informed by landscape. She received her MLA from UC Berkeley and BA from Kenyon College.

Howell has been an artist-in-residence at MacDowell, New Hampshire; Oak Spring Garden, Virginia; 100 W Corsicana, Texas; Blue Mountain Center, New York; Isle Royale National Park, Michigan, among others. Her work is published in Orion Magazine, Burnaway Magazine, and Wonderground Journal.

Images:
1. Cecil Howell.
2. “A footnote so tiny it slides off the page”, pastel, flashe, earth.
3. “Afterwards”, pastel, flashe, earth.
4. “In both ways at once”, pastel, flashe.

We are pleased to announce George Scheer as EFA new Executive Director!Scheer brings over 20 years of creative leadershi...
04/11/2024

We are pleased to announce George Scheer as EFA new Executive Director!

Scheer brings over 20 years of creative leadership and arts management experience to the EFA. Co-Founder and Executive Director of Elsewhere, an experimental museum and artist residency in North Carolina, Scheer most recently served as Executive Director of the Contemporary Arts Center, New Orleans. He succeeds EFA’s Founding Director Jane Stephenson, who departs the organization following 32 years of service.

Scheer joins the team at a critical moment as we strengthen the foundation of our programming and operations, grows board leadership, and expands patron support. “I am thrilled to join an organization like EFA, which makes supporting and sustaining artists within a holistic arts ecology core to its mission,” said Scheer. “EFA exemplifies the essential role of an artist-centered institution in fostering the next generation of artistic and critical thought.”

Image: photo of George Scheer by Dave Katz.

Our upcoming Spring exhibition 𝙍𝙪𝙣𝙣𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙅𝙤𝙠𝙚 curated by Janet Loren Hill, will be on view from March 14 – April 25. Join ...
03/06/2024

Our upcoming Spring exhibition 𝙍𝙪𝙣𝙣𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙅𝙤𝙠𝙚 curated by Janet Loren Hill, will be on view from March 14 – April 25. Join us for the Opening on March 14, 6-8 pm!

The exhibition features works by Paul Belenky, Kevin Dudley, Jonathan Ehrenberg, Sean Fader, Amy Hill, Akira Ikezoe, Rudolf Lingens, Polina Tereshina, and Huidi Xiang.

A joke creates its own logic. Operating on timing and playing on our expectations, jokes disrupt our typically unquestioned assumptions, making them appropriately strange. In this way a joke can turn on power and dislodge obscured systems, or it can simply provide a whimsical counter to an otherwise hum-drum existence. In Running Joke, nine artists deploy humor, play with time, and craft recurring symbols in their work with a wry wit.

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323 W 39th Street
New York, NY
10018

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