Mary L. Nohl Fund Individual Artist Programs

The application for the 2025 Nohl Fellowship cycle is now closed. If you would like to receive reminders and information about the Fellowship, please sign up for our mailing list here. Click here for more information on the program.

The Suitcase Export Fund is now open. To view the guidelines and application instructions, click here.

The 2023 cycle of the Ruth Arts Mary L Nohl Alumni Award is now closed. To learn more about the program, click here.

The Greater Milwaukee Foundation’s Mary L. Nohl Fund Fellowships for Individual Artists is a central pillar of Lynden’s support for artists. The program is funded by the foundation’s Mary L. Nohl Fund, which was created when artist Mary L. Nohl of Fox Point, Wisconsin, died in December 2001 at the age of 87, leaving a bequest of $9.6 million to the Greater Milwaukee Foundation. Her fund supports local visual arts and education programs, keeping her passion for the visual arts alive in the community.

The program has two components. The fellowship program provides unrestricted funds for Established and Emerging artists to create new work or complete work in progress. The Greater Milwaukee Foundation’s Mary L. Nohl Fund Suitcase Export Fund for Visual Art was created to help artists with the cost of exhibiting their work outside the four-county area (Milwaukee, Waukesha, Ozaukee, Washington). Both programs are open to practicing artists residing in the four-county area. One hundred and twenty-six fellowships have been awarded since the program began in 2003, and 414 individual artists and 26 artist collectives have received Suitcase Awards.

From 2022-2024, with the addition of support from Joy Engine, the Nohl Fellowship became one of the most generous regional fellowships for individual artists. This support enabled us to make significant changes to the program: increasing the size of awards for both the Nohl Fellowship and the Suitcase Export Fund; adding studio visits for the Emerging finalists during the jurying process; formalizing some of the professional development opportunities that come with the fellowship; and extending the fellowship period to provide artists with more time to develop their work.

The Ruth Arts Mary L. Nohl Alumni Award, launched in 2023, offers a new layer of support for former Nohl Fellows. It does this in two ways: by providing unrestricted funds to the selected artists and by working alongside artists to develop a network of career-sustaining opportunities to respond to their needs. In 2023, it was awarded to four artists: three living in the four-county area (Milwaukee, Ozaukee, Washington, Waukesha) and one currently living outside this area.

The Greater Milwaukee Foundation is Wisconsin’s largest community foundation and was among the first established in the world. For more than a century, the Foundation has been at the heart of the civic community, helping donors achieve the greatest philanthropic impact, elevating the work of changemakers across neighborhoods, and bringing people and organizations together to help our region thrive. Racial equity is the Foundation’s North Star, guiding its investments and strategies for social and economic change. Leveraging generations of community knowledge, cross-sector partnerships and more than $1 billion in financial assets, the Foundation is committed to reimagining philanthropy, recentering communities and remaking systems to transform our region into a Milwaukee for all.

The goal of the Ruth Foundation for the Arts is to explore new possibilities for arts philanthropy through an artist-driven approach. Responding to the evolving needs of our community and working across a wide spectrum of lived experiences, we aim to support those that center the unconventional and the exciting.

Lynden works with artists, educators, students, and communities to create, support, and share experiences at the intersection of art, nature, and culture. We operate as a laboratory, continually re-imagining Lynden's landscape, collection, and place in the community through exhibitions, performances, residencies, and hands-on education programs. We develop programs in collaboration with those we serve, focusing on place-based K-12 education; CALL & RESPONSE, an artist-driven initiative that celebrates the radical Black imagination as a means to re-examine the past and imagine a better future; and HOME, a space of leading, coming together, and celebrating refugees through art, food, and performance. Artists are at the center of everything we do. The Nohl Fellowship, the Suitcase Export Fund, and the Ruth Arts Mary L Nohl Alumni Award are three key programs that support artists. The staff of the Lynden does not participate in any part of the selection process for the Nohl Fellowship.