The Board of Trustees of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation announced today their appointment of the 101st class of Guggenheim Fellows, including 223 distinguished individuals working across 55 disciplines. Chosen through a rigorous application and peer review process from a pool of nearly 5,000 applicants, the Class of 2026 Guggenheim Fellows was tapped based on both prior career achievement and exceptional promise. As established in 1925 by founder Senator Simon Guggenheim, each Fellow receives a monetary stipend to pursue independent work at the highest level under “the freest possible conditions.”
“Our new class of Guggenheim Fellows is representative of the world’s best thinkers, innovators, and creators in art, science, and scholarship,” said Edward Hirsch, award-winning poet and President of the Guggenheim Foundation. “As the Foundation enters its second century and looks to the future, I feel confident that this new class of 223 individuals will do bold and inspiring work, undaunted by the challenges ahead. We are honored to support their visionary contributions.”
The Guggenheim Foundation has always been committed to awarding Fellowships at the highest level. Since its founding in 1925, the Foundation has awarded nearly $450 million in fellowships to more than 19,000 Fellows. This year, applications in the Creative Arts and Humanities were up by 50% and applications in the Sciences were up by 86%. At a time when intellectual and creative life is under attack, the Foundation continues to demonstrate its commitment to supporting extraordinary individuals breaking new ground in the Creative Arts, Natural Sciences, Social Sciences, Humanities, and a range of interdisciplinary fields.
In all, 55 scholarly disciplines and artistic fields, 97 academic institutions, 33 US states and the District of Columbia, three Canadian provinces, and eight countries beyond the United States and Canada are represented in the 2026 class. The Fellows range in age from 28 to 76, and around one third do not hold a full-time affiliation with a college or university.
Fellows' projects grapple with timeless themes and timely issues. They explore the promise and perils of artificial intelligence, propose life-changing advancements in medical technology, unearth the historical roots of contemporary crises, and forge new directions in artistic expression.
This year, the Guggenheim Foundation is proud to have three named Fellowships:
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The Dorothy Tapper Goldman Guggenheim Fellowship in Constitutional Studies has been awarded to Gerard N. Magliocca.
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The Richard F. Gustafson Guggenheim Fellowship in Slavic Studies has been awarded to Georg B. Michels.
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The Kayden Guggenheim Fellowship in Climate Studies has been awarded to Michael Kaplan.
Generous gifts from friends and previous Fellows have supported this year’s Fellows:
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Wendy Belzberg and Strauss Zelnick have underwritten a Fellowship in General Nonfiction in honor of Stacy Schiff, Fellow 1996, awarded to Donovan Hohn.
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Pat Ferrero, Fellow 1982, has underwritten a Fellowship in Film-Video awarded to Adam James Smith.
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The Robert Frank Foundation has underwritten a Fellowship in Photography in honor of Robert Frank, Fellow 1955 and 1956, awarded to Jeremiah Ariaz.
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The Dorothy Tapper Goldman Foundation has underwritten a Fellowship in Indigenous Studies, awarded to John Borrows.
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Stacy Schiff, Fellow 1996, and Marc de la Bruyère have underwritten a Fellowship in Fiction, awarded to Namwali Serpell.
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The Eleanor Schwartz Charitable Foundation has underwritten a Fellowship in Medicine & Health, awarded to Alexander Ploss.
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The Estate of Geraldine Jonçich Clifford, Fellow 1965, has underwritten a Fellowship in Education, awarded to Matthew Kraft.
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The Estate of Margaret W. Rossiter, Fellow 1981, has underwritten a Fellowship in a natural science field, awarded to Alexandra Z. Worden.
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A generous bequest from the estate of Philip Roth, 1959 Fellow, provides partial support of writers.
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Fellows in the creative arts are partially supported by the Joel Conarroe Fund, named for a former President of the Foundation who was a Guggenheim Fellow in 1977.
About the Guggenheim Foundation
Created and initially funded in 1925 by US Senator Simon and Olga Guggenheim in memory of their son John Simon, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation has sought to “further the development of 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.”
Since its establishment, the Guggenheim Foundation has granted nearly $450 million in Fellowships to more than 19,000 individuals, among whom are more than 125 Nobel laureates, members of all the national academies, winners of the Pulitzer Prize, Fields Medal, Turing Award, Bancroft Prize, National Book Award, and other internationally recognized honors. The broad range of fields of study is a unique characteristic of the Fellowship program. The Fellowship is application-based, and open to U.S. and Canadian citizens or permanent residents.
The Guggenheim Foundation centers the talents and instincts of the Fellows, whose passions often have broad and immediate social impact. For example, in 1936, Zora Neale Hurston wrote Their Eyes Were Watching God with the support of a Guggenheim Fellowship and dedicated it to the Foundation’s first president, Henry Allen Moe. Photographer Robert Frank’s seminal book, The Americans, was the product of a cross-country tour supported by two Guggenheim Fellowships. The accomplishments of other early Fellows like e.e. cummings, Jacob Lawrence, Rachel Carson, James Baldwin, Martha Graham, and Linus Pauling also demonstrate the strength of the Guggenheim Foundation’s core values and the power and impact of its approach.
