Nicholas Galanin and Lorraine O’Grady are among 28 visual artists to receive the 2024 Guggenheim Fellowship. In its 99th year, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation has tapped 188 individuals for this year’s cohort, 68 of whom are visual artists, photographers, filmmakers, architects, or fine arts and new media researchers. The fellows were selected from a pool of nearly 3,000 applicants whose submissions were peer-reviewed. The fellowships come with cash prizes usually ranging between $40,000 and $55,000.
Born in Boston and based in New York, 89-year-old artist, writer, and critic O’Grady left her career in translation to pursue art at the age of 45. O’Grady’s text-and-time-based practice examines Black female subjectivity and diaspora, and she will be reviving an old persona of hers in a new body of performance work. O’Grady’s first retrospective took place in 2021 at the Brooklyn Museum, and her solo exhibition at Mariane Ibrahim Gallery in Chicago, Illinois, is on view through May 25.
Based in Sitka, Alaska, Galanin (Tlingit/Unangax̂) intends to develop workshops and further his artistic practice rooted in cultural connections and the notions of land ownership in order to “create a greater discourse on Indigenous art,” per a statement from the foundation. Last year, Galanin received recognition for an outdoor sculpture at Brooklyn Bridge Park — his first public artwork in New York City orchestrated through the Public Art Fund. The artist was also recently celebrated in a solo retrospective of new and existing work at SITE in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Launched in 1925, the Guggenheim Fellowship is intended for mid-career professionals who have already demonstrated “exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the arts” with promise for equally impactful future endeavors. Former United States Senator and philanthropist John Simon Guggenheim and his wife Olga created the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation in 1922 in honor of their late son who died at age 17 before he began college.
Additional fellows of note include Atlanta-based artist Jessica Blinkhorn, whose upcoming project examines the intersection of disability, desirability, and sexuality, and photographer Sara Bennett, a former public defender who captures currently and formerly incarcerated women and their stories. Critic Christina Sharpe and scholar Tavia Nyong’o, who has contributed to Hyperallergic, were also awarded general nonfiction and theatre arts and performance studies fellowships, respectively.
Below is the full list of arts and film Guggenheim fellows:
Architecture, Planning, & Design
Film-Video
- Itziar Barrio
- Jessica Beshir
- Garrett Bradley
- Lilli Carré
- Jude Chehab
- Ariana Gerstein
- Juan Pablo González
- Ben Hagari
- Shadi Harouni
- Baba Hillman
- Crystal Kayiza
- Won Ju Lim
- Loira Limbal
- Raúl O. Paz-Pastrana
- Jennifer Redfearn
- Shengze Zhu
Film, Video, and New Media Studies
Fine Arts
- Sónia Almeida
- Kim Anno
- Anna Betbeze
- Jessica Elaine Blinkhorn
- Rebeca Bollinger
- Ben Thorp Brown
- Mike Cloud
- Lewis deSoto
- Adama Delphine Fawundu
- Nicholas Galanin
- Guillermo Galindo
- Antonietta Grassi
- Léonie Guyer
- Bang Geul Han
- Lotus L. Kang
- Nicola López
- Park McArthur
- Harold Mendez
- Taji Ra’oof Nahl
- Lorraine O’Grady
- Lamar Peterson
- Anders Herwald Ruhwald
- Carrie Schneider
- Jennifer Sirey
- Arvie Smith
- jackie sumell
- Dyani White Hawk
- Susan York
Fine Arts Research
- Claire Bishop
- Laura U. Marks
- Alexander Nagel
- Amara Solari
- Krista Thompson
Photography
- Sara Bennett
- Matthew Brandt
- Carlos Diaz
- Joanne Dugan
- Lisa Elmaleh
- Lucas Foglia
- Dylan Hausthor
- Katherine Hubbard
- Tarrah Krajnak
- Rachelle Mozman Solano
- Gina Osterloh
- Arthur Ou
- Ahndraya Parlato
- Greta Pratt
- Margaret Mary Stratton
- Leonard Suryajaya
- Ada Trillo
