LACMA Art + Technology Lab Grant 2026: Up to $50,000 Per Project — Plus Mentorship and Access to Anthropic, Snap, Hyundai, MIT Media Lab, and NASA JPL — for Artists Experimenting With Emerging Technology

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LACMA Art + Technology Lab Grant 2026: Up to $50,000 Per Project — Plus Mentorship and Access to Anthropic, Snap, Hyundai, MIT Media Lab, and NASA JPL — for Artists Experimenting With Emerging Technology

The Art + Technology Lab at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) is one of the few programs that treats an artist’s unfinished, unproven idea as something worth funding on its own terms. Its 2026 open call invites individuals and collectives from anywhere in the world to request up to $50,000 per project to cover artist fees and direct costs — and, just as importantly, to gain in-kind support and mentorship from a roster of technology partners that includes Anthropic, Snap Inc., Hyundai Motor, the MIT Media Lab, and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Proposals for the current cycle are due April 22, 2026, at 11:59 PM Pacific.

What sets this grant apart from most artist awards is that it is deliberately built for experimentation. You do not need a finished plan, a track record with the specific technology, or a gallery relationship to apply. The Lab is looking for a serious question and a credible way to pursue it. This guide walks through exactly what the grant offers, who it fits, how selection works, what to prepare, and how to give your proposal the best chance in a competitive open call.

Key Details at a Glance

What the Grant Actually Provides

The headline figure is money: applicants may request up to $50,000 per project to cover artist fees and direct costs, including materials. That is a meaningful sum for an experimental project, and because it explicitly includes artist fees, it is designed to pay you for your time rather than only reimbursing expenses. You build the requested amount from your own budget, so a smaller, tightly scoped project can request less; the $50,000 is a ceiling, not a fixed grant size.

The financial award is only half of the offer. The Lab pairs funded artists with in-kind contributions that are hard to buy at any price: mentorship and structured access to the tools, engineers, and researchers of its partner organizations. In recent cycles those partners have included Hyundai Motor Company (the long-term presenting partner), Snap Inc., and Anthropic, along with technical collaborators such as the MIT Media Lab and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. For an artist who wants to work with, say, a large language model, an augmented-reality platform, spacecraft imaging data, or advanced fabrication, this access can be the difference between an idea that stays a sketch and one that becomes real.

Projects supported by the Lab typically run for about two years. That extended runway matters. Emerging-technology work rarely resolves on a gallery-show timeline; it needs iteration, failed prototypes, and conversations with technical experts. The Lab’s model assumes that arc rather than penalizing it.

The History Behind the Program

The Art + Technology Lab is a revival of one of the most ambitious experiments in twentieth-century American art. From 1967 to 1971, LACMA ran an original Art and Technology program that embedded artists inside major corporations and research institutions, producing collaborations that became touchstones of the era. The contemporary Lab, relaunched in the 2010s, carries that legacy forward with a clearer public mission: to support experiments in design, creative entrepreneurship, art and industry, collaboration, and interdisciplinary dialogue.

Understanding this lineage helps you write a stronger proposal. The Lab is not looking for a polished product to exhibit; it is looking for the kind of genuine cross-disciplinary inquiry that the 1967–71 program pioneered. Past grantees illustrate the range: Casey Reas’s METAVASARELY (2023), Haleigh Nickerson’s Sojourner’s Rovers (2023), Patty Chang and David Kelley’s Stray Dog Hydrophobia (2023), Gala Porras-Kim’s Expansive Data Fields (2023), Tristan Duke’s Glacial Optics: Cold Cutting Edge (2023), Lauren Lee McCarthy’s Auto (2022), and Kelly Akashi’s Fissures (2022). These projects span generative software, environmental and glacial optics, data-driven installation, and speculative infrastructure — a useful signal that the Lab reads “technology” broadly.

Who Should Apply

This grant fits a wide range of practitioners, and the eligibility rules are refreshingly open:

• Individual artists and collectives worldwide. There is no citizenship or residency restriction, and recipients do not need to be located near Los Angeles. Remote collaboration is expected and supported.
• Artists without technical backgrounds. No prior technological experience is required. The Lab exists precisely to connect artists to expertise they do not already have, so curiosity and a strong conceptual footing count more than coding fluency.
• Interdisciplinary teams. Because collectives are eligible, artists can partner with technologists, scientists, designers, or writers and apply as a group.

The program is a strong fit if you have a clear artistic question that genuinely needs a specific technology to answer — not technology bolted on for novelty, but a tool that is integral to the idea. It is a weaker fit if your project is already fully resolved and simply needs production money, or if the technological element is decorative. The Lab’s advisory model rewards projects that will actually make use of mentorship and partner access.

How Selection Works

For the open call, three to five projects are selected, supplemented by up to two invitational projects. That means the competitive pool for public applicants is small, and the bar is high. Proposals are evaluated by an advisory committee drawn from LACMA and its partner network, so your application is read by people who understand both artistic merit and technical feasibility.

Two qualities tend to carry weight. First, artistic merit: the strength, originality, and seriousness of the idea as art, independent of the gadgetry. Second, feasibility and fit: whether the project realistically benefits from the Lab’s specific partners and whether the plan shows you have thought through how the work would actually be made. A proposal that names the technology loosely but cannot explain what it would do with partner access is easy to pass over.

What You Need to Prepare

The application is structured and specific. Based on the current requirements, you should be ready to submit:

• Project name and a one-sentence description — a crisp hook that a reviewer remembers.
• A 500-word project overview — the core of the application, where you explain the idea, the technology, and why they belong together.
• An artist bio — your background and relevant practice.
• An artistic merit statement (100 words maximum) — a tight case for why this matters as art.
• A public engagement plan (100 words maximum) — how audiences will encounter or benefit from the work.
• A detailed budget — how you would use the requested funds (up to $50,000) across artist fees and direct costs.
• An implementation timeline with milestones — a realistic sequence over roughly two years.
• Up to five supporting images or videos — with any video kept under five minutes total.

Every one of these fields is short, which means every word is scrutinized. The 100-word statements in particular reward precision over eloquence. Write them last, after your 500-word overview has clarified your own thinking.

Building a Competitive Proposal

Because so many strong applicants compete for three to five spots, the difference often comes down to clarity and fit rather than ambition alone. A few practical strategies:

Lead with the question, not the tool. Reviewers see many proposals that start from “I want to use AI” or “I want to use AR.” The memorable ones start from a genuine artistic or human question and arrive at the technology as the necessary means. Make your one-sentence description carry the idea, not the hardware.

Show that you need the Lab specifically. The grant’s value is partner access. Name what you would want to explore with a partner’s tools, data, or engineers, and be concrete about how that collaboration shapes the work. This signals you have read what the Lab actually offers.

Make the budget honest and legible. A budget that pays yourself a fair artist fee and itemizes direct costs reads as professional. Padding the number toward $50,000 without justification does not help; a smaller, well-reasoned request can be more persuasive.

Sequence the two-year timeline realistically. Break the work into research, prototyping, iteration, and public presentation phases with visible milestones. Reviewers want evidence that you understand experimentation involves failure and revision, not a straight line to a finished object.

Curate your five media samples ruthlessly. Choose work that demonstrates conceptual strength and, ideally, some capacity to handle materials or systems. Keep video short and front-load the most compelling moments.

Common Mistakes to Avoid

• Treating technology as decoration. If the project would be essentially the same without the technology, the Lab is not the right fit.
• Ignoring the public engagement dimension. The 100-word engagement plan is easy to rush, but it signals whether you have thought about the work beyond your studio.
• Overstuffing the 500-word overview. Trying to cram in every detail dilutes the central idea. Say clearly what the project is, why it matters, and how you would make it.
• Submitting a bloated or vague budget. Numbers that do not map to the plan undermine credibility.
• Missing the format limits. Exceeding word counts, media limits, or the five-minute video ceiling can weaken an otherwise strong application. Follow the specifications exactly.
• Waiting until the deadline. The portal closes at 11:59 PM Pacific on April 22, 2026. Uploading media and finalizing a budget at the last minute invites avoidable errors.

Timeline and Deadline

The key date for the current cycle is April 22, 2026, 11:59 PM Pacific Standard Time, the deadline to submit through the Submittable portal linked from LACMA’s official grants page. Selected projects have historically been announced later in the year, with project periods that can begin as early as the following fall and run for roughly two years. If you are reading this well before the deadline, the best use of the intervening months is to refine the concept, line up any collaborators for a collective application, and draft the budget and timeline early so the short-form statements can be polished at the end.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do I need to live in Los Angeles or the United States? No. Individuals and collectives worldwide may apply, and recipients need not be located near Los Angeles. The program supports remote collaboration.

Do I need experience with the technology I want to use? No. No prior technological experience is required. The Lab connects artists with mentorship and partner expertise precisely so they can work with unfamiliar tools.

How much can I request? Up to $50,000 per project, covering artist fees and direct costs including materials. You build the amount from your own budget, so requesting less for a smaller project is entirely appropriate.

How many artists are selected? Three to five projects are chosen through the open call, plus up to two invitational projects.

Can a team apply? Yes. Collectives are eligible, so you can apply with collaborators, including technologists or researchers.

How long do projects run? Project duration typically spans about two years, reflecting the experimental, iterative nature of the work.

Who do I contact with questions? The program can be reached at [email protected].

Official Links and Next Steps

Start at the official Request for Proposals page, which hosts the full guidelines and the application portal: LACMA Art + Technology Lab Grants. Review the broader program background at the Art + Technology Lab page to understand the Lab’s history and see past projects. For direct questions, email [email protected].

If the Lab fits your practice, the most valuable next step is to write your one-sentence description and 500-word overview now, then pressure-test them with a peer: does the idea land without jargon, and is it obvious why it needs this technology and this Lab? If the answer is yes, the rest of the application — budget, timeline, statements, and media — becomes a matter of careful execution before the April 22, 2026 deadline.