LONDON.- In times when British regional galleries, universities, museums and arts institutions can often be struggling for funding to mount exhibitions, undertake research or publish books, the world-renowned educational charity, The Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, is offering them a lifeline.

As part of its commitment to supporting scholarship, academic research and the spread of knowledge about British art and architecture, it offers bi-annual funding opportunities to individuals and institutions working in these areas.

Applications for the autumn 2018 grants have just opened, with £500,000 available.

In autumn 2017, seventeen cultural institutions (including The Holburne Museum, Blackburn Museum and Manchester Art Gallery) received funding for a variety of projects – including exhibitions, digital initiatives and educational programmes. The Centre also supported thirty publications on British art and architecture through grants to both authors and publishers (including University of Pennsylvania Press, Compton Verney House Trust and Oak Knoll Press), to enable them to print works which otherwise would not be available in the public domain.

The Paul Mellon Centre also gave financial support to individual scholars, via Research Support Grants – funding important research trips for dissertations, PhDs and book preparation.

The latest grants are available in six categories:

Curatorial Research Grants
These are grants of up to £40,000 to help institutions appoint a Research Curator to undertake study towards an exhibition or installation which will result in a printed or online catalogue. Previous recipients have included: Turner Contemporary for The Waste Land, Dulwich Picture Gallery for Winifred Knights 1899-1947 and the Impressions Gallery in Bradford for No Man’s Land: Women’s Photography and the First World War.

Digital Project Grants
Up to £40,000 can be awarded to undertake a digital research project or conduct research which will lead to a digital or online initiative. These bursaries are intended to stimulate new modes of research and collaboration. Previous recipients have included: The British Museum for the Digital Pilgrim project and Carnegie Museum for The Northbrook Project.

Research Support Grants
Grants of up to £2,000 for travel costs can be applied for by individuals engaged in research that involves studying British art or architectural history. Previous recipients have included scholars who have undertaken research trips to the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montreal to look at the English photographer Frederick Henry Evans’ lantern slides and a week-long trip to the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles to consult papers relating to the art dealers Agnew’s.

Educational Programme Grants
Grants of up to £3,000 are available to support institutions putting on educational programmes relating to British art or architectural history – previous grants have resulted in Downing College, Cambridge mounting the Elizabeth Frink symposium and University of Birmingham hosting the Art on the Move conference.

Publication Grants
To help authors and imprints meet the costs of printing, binding, design, layout and production, the Paul Mellon Centre has grants of up to £7,000 available for publishing, plus up to £3,000 for author costs (including licensing of images, reproduction and copyright costs, commission of new photography, etc). Recent recipients have included: Hamburger Kunsthalle for Thomas Gainsborough: The Modern Landscape, Boydell & Brewer for Derek Jarman’s Medieval Modern and The Hepworth Wakefield for Lee Miller and Surrealism in Britain.

Andrew Wyld Research Support Grants
Awarded by the Andrew Wyld Fund and administered by the Paul Mellon Centre, a further number of small awards (up to £2,000) are available to help students working in the field of British works of art on paper of the 18th and 19th centuries including watercolours, prints and drawings. Andrew Wyld was a well-known and much respected London art dealer, specialising in this area. After his 2011 death a group of his friends and family decided to set up a fund in his memory; with aim of helping students to do exactly as Andrew did, namely to look at, and judge, works of art on paper for themselves.

Mark Hallett, Director of Studies at the Paul Mellon Centre says “The whole reason The Paul Mellon Centre was established was to promote original, world-class research into the history of British art and architecture and to make it available to as wide an audience as possible. That is exactly why we are making these grants, to give much needed financial support to galleries, museums, curators and researchers, who might not otherwise be able to afford to mount an exhibition or publish their research.”

Applications close on Sunday 30 September, for more information visit www.paul-mellon-centre.ac.uk/fellowships-and-grants/opportunities.