The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation has announced 223 recipients of its annual fellowship, including 76 artists, fine arts researchers, architects, designers, and photographers.
Among this year’s fellows are Iranian-American artist and fine arts professor Sheida Soleimani; Leeza Meksin, co-founder of the Brooklyn artist-run gallery Ortega y Gasset Projects; New York-based sculptor American Artist; video artist Kenneth Tam; Ukrainian-born sculptor Alina Tenser; and Sonya Clark, known for her use of human hair as a medium in works exploring the Black American experience. A full list of visual arts recipients is included at the end of this article.
The 2026 Guggenheim Fellowship cohort spans 55 artistic and scientific disciplines selected from a competitive 5,000-person applicant pool. This year’s total applicants increased by nearly 2,000 from 2024 and by 1,500 from last year, when President Trump took office. Since the beginning of Trump’s second term, federal arts agencies have axed grants to both cultural organizations and individual artists.
The foundation does not specify the award amount and notes that grants vary depending on each year’s budget.
In 1925, Republican Senator Simon Guggenheim established the foundation and award in memory of his late 17-year-old son, with the stated aim of supporting scholars and artists “by assisting them to engage in research in any field of knowledge and creation in any of the arts, under the freest possible conditions.”
The grant has supported the creation of iconic works, including Robert Frank’s 1958 photography book The Americans and Zora Neal Hurston’s famed 1937 novel Their Eyes Were Watching God.
Applicants to the foundation’s 2026 awards in the Creative Arts and Humanities category sharply increased by 50% this year, the foundation said in a press release.
This year’s class hails from 10 countries and 33 US states. Most recipients are affiliated with a college or university, and the youngest member is 28 years old. The oldest recipient of the award is 76 years old.
