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.
