Today more than ever there is a clear call to understand and work with death and dying in new and more open ways.
The Art of Dying Institute’s certificate program, offered in partnership with the School of American Thanatology, is one of the oldest and most respected thanatology programs in the United States. The nine-month online training starting in August explores the spiritual, psychological, social, physical, and cultural dimensions of death, dying, loss, and grief from a holistic perspective. Students learn from leading faculty, engage in rich discussions, and join a global network of peers—all while building both personal insight and professional skill..
2026 Program Dates
The program this year, running from August 2026 through April 2027, is open for enrollment with an Early Bird rate ending June 30, 2026.
Early enrollment [till June 30, 2026]: $1,999
Regular enrollment [after July 1 – program reaches enrollment cap]: $2,499
A payment plan of $449/month over 6 months is available.
No scholarships are available for this cohort, although we hope to have a funded scholarship pool for future cohorts.
For more information and to register for the 2026 cohort, visit the School of American Thanatology.
Free Info Sessions
Cole Imperi, founder of the School of American Thanatology, will be hosting two information sessions where they’ll discuss the details of the program and answer any questions you may have:
Wednesday, June 25, 5:00-6:00PM Pacific Time
Monday, July 27, 5:00-6:00PM Pacific Time
Though grief, death and dying are ever present in both our personal lives and on a global scale – with the covid pandemic and climate crisis only further highlighting this – we have repressed the discussion of death to the extent that it has become an alienating and frightening experience for the dying and those around them.
Our mission at The Art of Dying Institute is to support a cultural awakening to a deeper and more conscious engagement with death and to build and support a community committed to reshaping how we approach death, how we die, and the consequences for how we live.
Our Mission
The Art of Dying Institute is a 501c3 not-for-profit located in New York City. The Institute began as a series of conferences and has evolved into a resource for education and community focusing on the spiritual, scientific and practical approaches to end of life care, bereavement, and death. An important goal of the Art of Dying Institute is to find practical ways to return a sense of the sacred to death itself and to explore how awareness of our own mortality influences how we live.
The Institute’s work springs from a series of core questions:
- How can we work more compassionately and intelligently with the dying?
- How can we develop more enlightened, collective care for the dying even in our environment of technological medicine and culture of individualism?
- How can our own death, and the death of those we love, be faced with courage and awareness? How does a willingness to face death affect how we live?
- Does consciousness survive death and, if so, what might we expect? How can we best prepare?
WHAT WE DO:
- Provide holistic education programs taught by renowned practitioners and professionals from many areas of end of life expertise; including palliative care, hospice work, end of life doulas, music thanatology, bereavement and loss counseling, funeral home directors and spiritual leaders.
- Program and coordinate local, national and international forums for community discussion and engagement
- Partner with front-line practitioners, hospitals, hospices,research centers, universities, holistic organizations and lay persons
- Empower contemporary thought leaders and front-line practitioners to reshape the dialogue around death and the spaces in which we confront death
- Help facilitate a cultural shift in how we think about, engage with, and experience death
The Institute’s main goal is to bring together outstanding innovators in palliative care with experts in spiritual and religious traditions to create state of the art educational programs to address these issues and reimagine the end of life experience.
Why an Art of Dying Institute?
Every day, people face the realities of death frightened and unprepared. Most people are unaware of their options for end of life and for creating meaningful memorials after death.
Despite the universality of death and grief, the experience is too often incredibly isolating. We often face bereavement alone without tools for finding meaning and healing.
Caregivers of the dying and bereaved most commonly offer help without their own sustaining spiritual practices, adequate collegial support, or the important explorations of their own mortality, all of which contributes to a high level of burnout.
The Art of Dying Institute is dedicated to fostering an engaged community of practitioners; researchers & scholars; educators; front-line innovators; partners; and donors to address the need for a cultural awakening around the theme of death and our mortality, how we die and the consequences for how we live.
create state of the art educational programs to address these issues and reimagine the end of life experience.
The Art of Dying Institute is a non-profit organization bringing innovative, holistic perspectives to death and dying. It emerged from the Art of Dying conferences produced by the New York Open Center beginning in 1995. Its mission is to bring greater wisdom and consciousness to the field of thanatology. Based in New York City we bring profound and creative trainings, conferences and workshops to this vital arena.
We invite you to give in support of the area of our work that resonates with you.
Our General Fund supports those aspects of the Institute where the need is greatest
The Art of Dying Institute is a 501(c)(3) non profit organization. Your gift is tax deductible to the extent allowable by law.
Thanks you helping in this important work.
If you’d like to support the work we do, please email contact@artofdying.org to make a donation or discuss partnership.
Address
P.O.Box 1468 4602 21st St
Long Island City, NY
11101 - 9998