The Socrates Annual Fellowship 2025
Socrates Sculpture Park
Long Island City, NY 11106
Deadline
Posted
The Socrates Annual Fellowship is an opportunity for early career artists to realize new public artworks at Socrates Sculpture Park, a public park in Long Island City, Queens. The Fellowship is a highly competitive program that reflects the Park’s commitment to artistic experimentation and nurturing artistic careers. This important training ground for early career artists allows Artist Fellows to gain experience creating ambitious public art projects. Socrates encourages artists to create proposals for new works in disciplines including sculpture, performance, social practice, ecology as well as across multiple and new disciplines.
Fellowship recipients receive a Production Grant up to $8,000 to support their project, a $2,000 honorarium, and seven-days-a-week access to the Park’s resources and facilities, including the outdoor artist studio, as well as the technical and administrative support needed to design and realize an artwork within the Park. Fellows are responsible for the production and transportation of their own artworks, but will collaborate closely with Socrates’ curatorial, operations, and public programs staff.
The Fellowship culminates in The Socrates Annual, an exhibition that showcases Fellows’ completed works, from September 2025 – March 2026.
2025 Park Update: In partnership with the City of New York, Socrates Sculpture Park will soon begin preparing for the Seawall Reconstruction Project, developed in the wake of Hurricane Sandy. This project is managed by the NYC Department of Parks and Recreation and the construction phase is set to begin at Socrates in spring 2025. Visitors will experience reduced access to certain areas of the Park including the north entrance, portions of the north lawn, and the waterfront.
During this time, Socrates will continue to activate the Park through robust exhibition, education, and public programming. They see this moment of transformation as an opportunity to reflect on their role as stewards of the Park, emphasizing a commitment to social and environmental resilience. They will continue to update the community on the progress of the project and its impacts as they receive information from the NYC Department of Parks and Recreation.