The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation has announced this week the 223 scholars and artists who received a 2026 Guggenheim Fellowship, one of the most coveted honors in the arts.
This is the foundation’s 101st class of fellows. The class spans 55 scholarly disciplines and artistic fields, with fellows chosen from a pool of nearly 5,000 applicants. Fellows are divided into creative arts, social sciences, natural sciences, and humanities. The creative arts portion has 30 fellows for fine arts, 19 for photography, 19 for film & video, 10 for fiction, and six for drama and performance art, among other disciplines.
Among the winners in the fine arts category this year are sculptor John Ahearn; new media and installation artist American Artist, who last had an exhibition at Pioneer Works in 2025; Kenneth Tam, who is featured in the upcoming edition of “Greater New York” at MoMA PS1; Japanese German artist Kota Ezawa, who has had exhibitions at the Buffalo AKG Art Museum and the Cummer Museum in Florida; fiber artist Sonya Clark, whose exhibition “We Are Each Other ” traveled to the High Museum of Art and the Cranbrook Museum of Art; and multidiscplinary artist John Miller. Other winners include Juana Valdes, Fia Backström, Allison Janae Hamilton, and Francis Ruyter.
Also receiving a fellowship are video artists Steve Reinke, whose work appeared in the 2014 Whitney Biennial and is in the permanent collection of MoMA; Beatriz Santiago Muñoz, who appeared in the 2017 Whitney Biennial as well as exhibitions at El Museo del Barrio and the Pérez Art Museum Miami; and Christopher Harris, whose films appeared at the Tate Modern last year. Collier Schorr
Novelist and Art in America contributor Lucy Ives won in the fiction category.
Created in 1925, the Guggenheim Fellowship has awarded nearly $450 million to over 19,000 artists and scholars.
The full list of the 2026 Guggenheim Fellows in Creative Arts follows below, and the full list can be asked on the foundation’s website.
Biography
Kristen Iversen
Choreography
Kyle Abraham
Yanira Castro
Seán Curran
K.J. Holmes
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Molly Rose Lieber
nia love
Amy O’Neal
Raymond Pinto
Silas Riener
Eleanor Smith
Drama & Performance Art
Penny Arcade
Stephanie Fleischmann
Haruna Lee
Ralph B. Peña
Alva Rogers
Elaine Romero
Fiction
Andre Alexis
Jessica Anthony
Lucy Ives
Marlon James
Bret Anthony Johnston
Megha Majumdar
Anders Nilsen
Maurice Ruffin
Namwali Serpell
Madeleine Thien
Film-Video
Margaret Brown
Brian M. Cassidy
Reid Davenport
Cate Giordano
Jacqueline Goss
Christopher Harris
Brian Christopher Hawkins
Madeleine Hunt – Ehrlich
Zhu Jia
Sarah Lasley
Steve Maing
Mitch McCabe
Tenzin Phuntsog
Steve Reinke
Anna Samo
Beatriz Santiago Muñoz
Melanie Shatzky
Fern Silva
Adam James Smith
Fine Arts
John Ahearn
American Artist
Fia Backström
Elena Bajo
Amy Bessone
Raymond Boisjoly
Sonya Clark
Kota Ezawa
Jude Griebel
Iva Gueorguieva
Karl Haendel
Fariba Hajamadi
Allison Janae Hamilton
LaMont Hamilton
James Hoff
Julia M. Kunin
Monica Majoli
Aspen Mays
Leeza Meksin
John Miller
Marina Rosenfeld
Michael Ross
Francis Ruyter
Kate Shepherd
Claire Sherman
Kenneth Tam
Alina Tenser
Juana Valdes
Jennifer West
Anne Wilson
General Nonfiction
Emily Benedek
William Deresiewicz
Elisa Gabbert
Amitav Ghosh
Elizabeth Goodstein
Donovan Hohn
John J. Lennon
Joseph Luzzi
James Marcus
Emily Ogden
Pamela Petro
Music Composition
Mathew Arrellín
Sivan Cohen Elias
Oswald Huỳnh
Jon Irabagon
Ingrid Laubrock
James Brandon Lewis
David Serkin Ludwig
Modney
Reinaldo Manuel Moya
Linda May Han Oh
Kay Kyurim Rhie
Laurie Schwartz
Marcelo Toledo
Anya Yermakova
Photography
Samantha Appleton
Jeremiah Ariaz
Chris Aluka Berry
Harlan Bozeman
Jonathan Michael Castillo
Stephen Ferry
Allison Grant
Kapulani Landgraf
Matthew Leifheit
Pixy Liao
Chris McCaw
Fred Ritchin
Collier Schorr
Lara Shipley
Sheida Soleimani
riel Sturchio
Sadie Wechsler
Guanyu Xu
Samira Yamin
Poetry
Raymond Antrobus
Paula Bohince
Heather Christle
Myronn Hardy
Christopher Kempf
Suji Kwock Kim
Edgar Kunz
Rickey Laurentiis
Vivek Narayanan
V. Penelope Pelizzon
