Create Wisconsin uplifts artists and local leaders in the arts by connecting creative communities across Wisconsin.

Through the support of Wisconsin Artist Grants, Create Wisconsin administers the Create Wisconsin Statewide Artist Grant. The grant is open to eligible visual and performing artists across the state. Special consideration is given to applicants from counties with populations under 55,000, with up to 35% of the funding directed toward these areas. Artists may apply for support for an individual artistic enrichment project or a community-based project.

Create Wisconsin is also a recipient of the Foundation’s RDK Legacy Fund—a unique program dedicated to honoring and continuing Ruth DeYoung Kohler’s steadfast support of regional and craft-based organizations and artist-built environments.

The Lynden Sculpture Garden offers a unique experience of art in nature through its collection of more than 50 monumental sculptures sited across 40 acres of park, lake and woodland.

With support from Ruth Arts, the Lynden Sculpture Garden expands its Mary L. Nohl Fund Fellowship Program, one of the longest standing and most prominent grants for individuals in Milwaukee that provides unrestricted funds for established and emerging artists. The Ruth Arts Mary L. Nohl Alumni Award offers a new layer of support for former Nohl Fellows by providing unrestricted funds to selected artists, and by working alongside current and former awardees to build a program that centers artist self-determination and supports artist-defined forms of success.

The Open Fund supports visual artist initiatives that are public oriented and experimental, with support from Ruth Arts and The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts Regional Re-granting Program. Examples of past grantees include the presentation of creative and experimental work via film screenings, exhibition series, pop-up presentations, zines and media, educational models, civic sites in addition to other inventive models of artistic engagements.

The Open Fund is administered by two Wisconsin artist-run spaces: The Poor Farm and The Open. In 2024, the Open Fund distributed $120,000 to 14 Visual Arts Projects within the Milwaukee County. In 2025, funding eligibility expanded to the entire state of Wisconsin, providing 22 grants to artist projects throughout the state.

The Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design (MIAD) is Wisconsin’s only four-year, private college of visual art and design, offering a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Communication Design, Illustration, Industrial Design, Interior Architecture and Design, and New Studio Practice: Fine Arts.

Through the support of Wisconsin Artist Grants, from 2023–2025 MIAD administered the Ruth Arts + MIAD Artist Grant Program. The grant program supported research and development of work by individual artists who are faculty and staff at the college.

MIAD is also a recipient of the Foundation’s RDK Legacy Fund—a unique program dedicated to honoring and continuing Ruth DeYoung Kohler’s steadfast support of regional and craft-based organizations and artist-built environments.