Twenty-six individuals—including artists, writers, philosophers, educators, scientists, urban designers, and criminal justice reformers—have been awarded MacArthur Fellowships, also known as the “genius grants,” for their “extraordinary originality and dedication in their creative pursuits.” Administered by the MacArthur Foundation, the fellowships come with an unrestricted award of $625,000.
Among the cultural producers included in this year’s cohort are visual artists Mel Chin, who uses his practice to raise awareness of social and environmental concerns; Jeffrey Gibson, who draws from indigenous North American traditions, queer histories, and contemporary references in his work; and Cameron Rowland, who creates displays of physical objects that make visible the institutions, systems, and policies that perpetuate systemic racism and economic inequality.
“Cultural responsibility used to feel limiting to me, but I now think that had to do with popular, and narrow, definitions of tradition and history,” Gibson, whose sculptural garments are on view in the Whitney Biennial until October 27, told Artforum last year. “As I’ve gotten older, I’ve embraced responsibility. Not everybody has something in their past that draws their attention to what it’s like to be a queer person in central Mississippi. There’s something valuable about the responsibility to speak in whatever way you can.”
Theater director Annie Dorsen, guitarist and composer Mary Halvorson, choreographer Sarah Michelson, and landscape and public artist Walter Hood also received fellowships. For the January 2014 issue of this magazine, David Velasco, Artforum’s editor in chief and the author of Sarah Michelson: Modern Dance (MoMA, 2017), wrote on Michelson’s oeuvre: “In 2005 a friend took me to P.S.122 to see a dance by Sarah Michelson. I sat, absorbed by the four dancers pouring across the stage and the world that opened up in front of me. The performance began with a blare of saxophones and ended like nothing I’d ever seen, with a shadow dance that disembarked from the first dance, with no ritualistic closure of a bow. Afterward, I remember walking to the box office to buy two tickets so I could bring a friend to see it with me the next night. And since then not a single day has passed that I have not thought about her and her dancing.”
The fellows are chosen based on their demonstrated innovation and creativity in their respective crafts and their potential to make important contributions to society. Last year’s recipients included Julie Ault, Titus Kaphar, and Wu Tsang.
A full list of the MacArthur Fellows is as follows:
Elizabeth Anderson
Philosopher
Sujatha Baliga
Attorney and restorative justice practitioner
Lynda Barry
Graphic novelist, cartoonist and educator
Mel Chin
Artist
Danielle Citron
Legal scholar
Lisa Daugaard
Criminal justice reformer
Annie Dorsen
Theater artist
Andrea Dutton
Geochemist and paleoclimatologist
Jeffrey Gibson
Visual artist
Mary Halvorson
Guitarist and composer
Saidiya Hartman
Literary scholar and cultural historian
Walter Hood
Landscape and public artist
Stacy Jupiter
Marine scientist
Zachary Lippman
Plant biologist
Valeria Luiselli
Writer
Kelly Lytle Hernandez
Historian
Sarah Michelson
Choreographer
Jeffrey Alan Miller
Literary scholar
Jerry X. Mitrovica
Theoretical geophysicist
Emmanuel Pratt
Urban designer
Cameron Rowland
Artist
Vanessa Ruta
Neuroscientist
Joshua Tenenbaum
Cognitive scientist
Jenny Tung
Evolutionary anthropologist and geneticist
Ocean Vuong
Poet and fiction writer
Emily Wilson
Classicist and translator
