The United States Artists (USA) has announced 50 artists and collectives for its 2026 USA fellowships, ranging across 10 disciplines, and the recipient of its Beeresford Prize. This year, the fellowships were awarded to six visual artists: Edra Soto, Eric-Paul Riege, Macon Reed, Maia Chao, Mercedes Dorame, and Raheleh Filsoofi.
The USA Fellowship awards artists $50,000 in unrestricted cash, allowing recipients to decide how best to support their lives and practices. The Berresford Prize honors a single cultural practitioner for their work supporting artists. This year, the prize was awarded to Lori Lea Pourier (Oglala Lakota), the founder of the First People’s Fund.
“For two decades, United States Artists has advanced a simple yet powerful conviction—that artists are essential to the imagination and health of our society,” said Judilee Reed, president and CEO of United States Artists. “Our commitment to unrestricted support, with programs such as the USA Fellowship, has enabled artists across every discipline and place to sustain their livelihoods, take creative risks, and define their own paths forward.”
Chicago-based Edra Soto is the director of outdoor project space The Franklin, whose interdisciplinary work explores social and political power structures. Her new installation, the place of dwelling, opens at the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art in January 2026. Based in Philadelphia, Maia Chao makes performance and video work with an anthropological approach, documenting the lives of people in the U.S. She will be participating in the 2026 Whitney Biennial.
A photographer based in California, Mercedes Dorame taps into her Tongva ancestry to inspire her nature-inspired works. Meanwhile, Raheleh Filsoofi is a nomadic artist whose work focuses on immigration and social activism, with clay and sound as her primary media. New Orleans–based artist Macon Reed is known for large-scale installations built from handmade structural elements that explore queerness and feminism. Finally, New Mexico–based artist Eric-Paul Riege uses fiber and textiles to create giant installations and sculptures, inspired by his Indigenous heritage.
The craft category honored six artists, including Anina Major, Anthony Sonnenberg, Corey Pemberton, Norwood Viviano, Robell Awake, and Xenobia Bailey.
The United States Artists’s Fellowship program was launched in 2006. In the past two decades, USA has awarded $53 million total to more than 1,000 individuals. Previous recipients include Howardena Pindell, María Magdalena Campos-Pons, and Gala Porras-Kim.
