Current CANVAS Grantees

The American Composers Orchestra will present Hello, America: We Gather Here at Carnegie Hall in New York City in Fall 2026, featuring the American premiere of Alex Weiser’s Tfiles (Prayers) for clarinet and orchestra, with Polish soloist Andrzej Ciepliński, conducted by Kedrick Armstrong. The program explores identity and belonging through cross-cultural dialogue, connecting Jewish, Polish, and American perspectives, with additional featured works by Mali Irene, Oswald Huỳnh, and Daniel Bernard Roumain. 

-ARLEKIN!, an award-winning immigrant-led theatre company, will tour its acclaimed production of Our Class to San Francisco (and other stops to be announced) following critically acclaimed performances at BAM and off-Broadway. Directed by former Mandel Cultural Fellow Igor Golyak, the play follows ten classmates, Jewish and Catholic, whose lives are torn apart by the 1941 Jedwabne pogrom, confronting themes of antisemitism, silence, and civic responsibility.

BAMAH’s Sacred Cycles is a two-city public arts tour featuring Israeli artists Neta Elkayam, Amit Hai Cohen, and David Polonsky, blending immersive video, sound installation, community programs, and a culminating concert in New Orleans and Atlanta in 2026.

The Chocolate Church Arts Center is reimagining its role as a small-town arts hub, bringing Jewish artists and artistry to its community of Bath, Maine. The Amplify grant will support Hanukkah Mexicana, a concert mash-up of Mariachi and Klezmer; Mythic Migrations, featuring workshops and stories of Somali, Angolan, Jewish, Irish, Abenaki, and Quebecois communities in Midcoast Maine; theatrical performances by the Maggid Ensemble; Klezmer dance parties by Myrtle Street Klezmer; and other programming that brings master Jewish artists across Maine and beyond to create multidisciplinary, cross-cultural immersive artistic experiences.

Inheritance Theater Project is facilitating the Baltimore Place Project, a year-long initiative using Jewish text study, civic dialogue, and collaborative playmaking to bridge divides among Black, Jewish, and Black-Jewish communities, in partnership with local institutions including the Baltimore Mayor’s Office of Community Outreach, Third Space at Shaarei Tfiloh and Baltimore Center Stage.

The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston will commission a new site-specific work by Israeli artist Michal Rovner, as part of the exhibition The Book of Esther in the Age of Rembrandt. Juxtaposing seventeenth-century art with Rovner’s contemporary feminist reinterpretation, whose work explores displacement, memory, and resilience, the project aims to spark cross-cultural dialogue on identity, survival, and political agency across historical and modern contexts.

The Museum of Jewish Montreal will launch Our Ritual and Identity by artist Ella Cooper as the inaugural exhibition in its renovated gallery in 2027. Featuring immersive photography, video, sound, and augmented reality, the project centers seven Black Jewish individuals sharing rituals and stories of identity and belonging. Collaborations with Montréal en Lumière/Nuit Blanche Festival and Black Women Film & Media will amplify Black Jewish experiences to secular audiences while modeling inclusive, interdisciplinary Jewish cultural practice. 

New Ear Inc., a New York–based curatorial platform for experimental media and socially engaged art, will present an exhibition at Fridman Gallery, curated by sociologist Efrat Yerday, exploring the history and contemporary experiences of the Ethiopian Jewish community.

Acclaimed musician Galeet Dardashti’s national college tour features live performances of her full-band concert, Monajat, and of the hit audio documentary Nightingale of Iran, with co-creator and Emmy Award–winning storyteller Danielle Dardashti. Supported by Be’chol Lashon, the tour celebrates the legacy of their Iranian-Jewish grandfather, Younes Dardashti, a radio star widely popular among Muslim audiences in 1950s–60s Iran.

Ragtag Cinema, a part of the Ragtag Film Society and host of the True/False Film Fest, will present Sandi DuBowski’s feature documentary Sabbath Queen as part of a Midwest and American South Tour to 20 cities in 2026, including a Sabbath Queen Friday Feast led by Rabbi Amichai Lau-Lavie in Columbia, Missouri. Filmed over 21 years, the film explores Jewish identity, spirituality, ritual, and LGBTQ inclusion through the life of a groundbreaking Jewish spiritual leader.

Alliance for Jewish Theatre is made up of theatre-artists, theatres, and other people connected and dedicated to Promoting and Preserving Jewish Theatre, including the creation, presentation, and preservation of both traditional and non-traditional theatrical endeavors by, for, and about the Jewish experience.

Art/Lab: Innovating Jewish Arts and Culture is a community of contemporary Jewish artists, culture bearers and the audiences they engage throughout Portland, OR and the environs. Art/Lab’s vision manifests as a fellowship cohort for contemporary Jewish artists, an art gallery exclusively for Pacific Northwest Jewish artists, exhibitions, arts workshops and other public programs and dialogues.

Council of American Jewish Museums (CAJM) is an association of institutions and individuals committed to enriching American and Jewish culture and enhancing the value of Jewish museums to their communities. It offers programs, networking, and learning opportunities to the Jewish-museum field, and highlights issues pertaining to the presentation of Jewish culture.

Jewish Art Salon is a global network dedicated to contemporary Jewish visual art, founded in 2008 and based in New York City. With over 400 members and 2,000 subscribers, the Jewish Art Salon has significantly influenced the field through its dynamic range of exhibitions, workshops, and interactive events.

Jew­ish Book Coun­cil, found­ed in 1943, is the longest-run­ning orga­ni­za­tion devot­ed exclu­sive­ly to the sup­port and cel­e­bra­tion of Jew­ish lit­er­a­ture. For over sev­en­ty years, Jew­ish Book Coun­cil has brought peo­ple togeth­er for mean­ing­ful dis­cus­sions about Jew­ish life, iden­ti­ty, and cul­ture through a lit­er­ary lens.

Kultura Collective is network of modern Jewish Arts, Culture and Heritage organizations that celebrates and amplifies Jewish culture throughout Toronto. As a community, Kultura shares and explores its culture and traditions through meaningful artistic experiences.

Museum of Jewish Montreal is redefining what it means to engage in Jewish life. In addition to hosting art exhibitions and leading hundreds of walking tours and food tours annually, the museum hosts dozens of cultural events throughout the year based around art, food, music, and history.

New Jewish Culture Fellowship (NJCF) brings together an interdisciplinary cohort of groundbreaking Jewish artists to share work, discuss issues and texts, and learn from and with each other over the course of an academic year. Fellows come from all creative fields—visual arts, writing, performance, music, and more—and apply with projects that would benefit from the feedback and support of peers similarly drawn to exploring the rich, complex inheritance of Jewish life and identity in all its forms.

Reboot reimagines and reinforces Jewish thought and traditions, offering an inviting mix of discovery, experience and reflection. Through Reboot Studios, their media investment and development arm, Reboot funds and produces projects in television, film, theater, podcasts, music, publishing and beyond.

The Workshop is North America’s first arts fellowship centering the work of JOCISM (Jews of Color, Jewish-Indigenous, Sephardi & Mizrahi) artists & culture-makers. Conceived and founded by theatre-artist and rabbi, Kendell Pinkney, The Workshop seeks to stir-up, interrogate, incubate, expand, trouble and revitalize Jewish art by providing unparalleled career support for wildly talented artists.

Yetzirah is dedicated to fostering and supporting a community space for Jewish poets, nourishing writers and readers of Jewish poetry now and for generations to come. Founded in Asheville, North Carolina, Yetzirah is the only national organization devoted to the support of Jewish poets and Jewish poetry.

The Ashkenaz Foundation celebrates global Jewish music, arts, and culture that embraces the past, present and future. While rooted in the spirit and forms of the Yiddish culture revival, Ashkenaz spotlights a broad range of multi-ethnic Jewish identities and artistic/cultural traditions, providing a platform for artists established and emerging.

Ayin Press is an independent publishing house and production studio rooted in Jewish culture and emanating outward. Ayin was founded on a deep belief in the power of culture and creativity to heal, transform, and uplift the world we share and build together.

Havurah is a collective of young Jewish artists, painters, writers, poets, musicians, filmmakers, photographers, and creative souls of all kinds in New York City, ushering in a new generation of artistry. Havurah is reclaiming a Jewish tradition tracing back to Bezalel that sees art as a mechanism for engaging with the divine and, consequently, as crucial to spiritual practice.

The Vilna Shul is Boston’s center for Jewish culture, located in historic synagogue building in downtown. Through arts and culture, The Vilna Shul sparks excitement and curiosity about Jewish life and the American immigrant story towards their vision of a more connected inclusive society.  In 2025, the Jewish Arts collaborative and the Vilna Shul became one, offering even more access to Jewish joy and community through the arts.

The Jewish Film Institute (JFI) is the premier curatorial voice for Jewish film and media around the world. Founded in 1980 as the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival (SFJFF), the world’s first and most revered event for independent, Jewish-themed storytelling, JFI’s programs illuminate the full diversity of Jewish experiences.

70 Faces Media is the largest and most diverse Jewish media organization in North America, that aspires to connect as many people as possible to all sides of the unfolding Jewish story. Their brands include Kveller, JTA, My Jewish Learning, HeyAlma, The Nosher, and NY Jewish Week.

The Forward is the most significant Jewish voice in American journalism, reporting on cultural, social and political issues that inspires readers of all ages and animates conversation across generations and different segments of their community. The Forward’s English and Yiddish platforms build on a century-old legacy maintained in our archives and lead to a deeper understanding of what it means to be Jewish in the 21st century.