The Guggenheim Foundation has announced the 171 recipients of its 2023 fellowships. Those awarded the sought-after honor include painters, filmmakers, photographers, writers, architects, scientists, anthropologists, engineers, historians, and mathematicians. Forty-two disciplines and fields of interest are represented this year, with recipients scattered across twenty-four states, the District of Columbia, and two Canadian provinces. A number of fellows are working on projects responding to issues including the lasting effects of the Covid-19 pandemic, democracy and policing, scientific innovation, climate change, and identity. Each fellowship comes with funds attached: Because the amount awarded varies from recipient to recipient, the foundation does not reveal individual funding.
“Like Emerson, I believe that fullness in life comes from following our calling,” said Guggenheim Foundation president Edward Hirsch, himself a 1985 Poetry Fellow, in a statement. The new class of Fellows has followed their calling to enhance all of our lives, to provide greater human knowledge and deeper understanding. We’re lucky to look to them to bring us into the future.”
Among the grant winners in the artistic and cultural disciplines is Lavar Munroe, whose fine arts fellowship was underwritten by Robert De Niro in honor of the actor’s father, a painter and a 1968 Guggenheim Fellow. Munroe’s work centers on his upbringing in the Bahamas and investigates themes of resilience, memory, ancestry, and fantasy. Other new fellows include the Paris-based Kapwani Kiwanga, a trained anthropologist and social scientist who examines themes of mutation, Afrofuturism, belief systems, and popular culture through installation, sound, video, and performance; the Daegu, South Korea–born Jiwa Moon, who through gestural paintings, mixed media, ceramic sculpture and installation investigates issues of identity and the global movement of people and cultures; and the Tokyo-born, Minneapolis-based ceramicist Tetsuya Yamada, who explores concepts such as rhythm, memory, and human connection to the natural world.
A full list of recipients is available on the foundation’s website.
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