The MacArthur Fellowship
Celebrating and inspiring the creative potential of individuals through no-strings-attached fellowships.
At the heart of the MacArthur Fellows Program is its aim to identify extraordinarily creative individuals with a track record of excellence in a field of scholarship or area of practice, who demonstrate the ability to impact society in significant and beneficial ways through their pioneering work or the rigor of their contributions.
In keeping with this purpose, the Foundation awards fellowships directly to individuals rather than through institutions. Recipients may be writers, scientists, artists, social scientists, humanists, teachers, entrepreneurs, or individuals in other fields, with or without institutional affiliations.
By providing these individuals with unfettered support in pursuit of creative activities, the Fellows Program seeks to:
- Cultivate the next generation of innovators;
- Highlight the importance of imaginative thinking in creating objects of beauty that inspire;
- Spotlight the value of risk-taking in addressing deep-rooted societal problems; and
- Influence how people think about creativity.
While individuals will have a track record of significant achievement, the fellowship is not a lifetime achievement award – it is an investment in a person's originality, insight, and potential. The Fellows Program is proactively working to foster and enable innovative, imaginative, and ground-breaking ideas, thinking, and strategies.
The Foundation does not require or expect specific products or reports from MacArthur Fellows and does not evaluate recipients' creativity during the term of the fellowship. The MacArthur Fellowship is a "no-strings-attached" award in support of people, not projects. Each fellowship comes with an award of $800,000 to the recipient, paid out in equal quarterly installments over five years.
