The New York–based Joan Mitchell Foundation has named the twenty-five artists who are recipients of this year’s Painters & Sculptors grants, which are meant to assist artists making exceptional work and who are seen as deserving greater national recognition. Each grantee will receive $25,000 in unrestricted funds. The foundation, which was formed in 1993 to celebrate and expand the abstract painter’s vision, noted in a statement that it felt especially compelled to make the awards this year, given the current landscape in which artists are operating.
Potential recipients are nominated by artist peers or by those working in the field of the arts in the US and chosen through a multi-phase jurying process, which this year took place virtually. The 2020 artist cohort represents a wide range of creative approaches and backgrounds as well as ethnicities, ages, and geographic locations, with recipients ranging in age from twenty-eight to eighty-two. The artists chosen employ varied formal techniques and approaches, and focus on an array of concerns, engaging with complex and universally relevant issues including immigration, protest and patriotism, the multiplicity of identity, and underrepresented histories, among others.
In addition to the cash awards, grant recipients are given access to a network of arts professionals able to offer career and financial guidance. Grantees are typically eligible to apply for residencies at the Joan Mitchell Center in New Orleans; however, owing to the continuing Covid-19 pandemic, in 2020 and 2021, only members of the local artist community will be considered for residencies; the program will reopen to artists across the country in 2022.
This year’s winners are Zarouhie Abdalian (New Orleans); Natalie Ball (Chiloquin, OR); Rina Banerjee (New York), Bahar Behbahani (Brooklyn, NY); Sarah Cain (Los Angeles); Luke Luokun Cheng (Falls Church, VA); Jessie Chun (Brooklyn, NY); Gabriel Dawe (Dallas); Joey Fauerso (San Antonio); Colette Fu (Philadelphia); Reggie Burrows Hodges (Maine); Linda Infante Lyons (Anchorage, AK); Kahlil Robert Irving (Saint Louis); Tomashi Jackson (Cambridge, MA); Caroline Kent (Chicago); Fred H. C. Liang (Boston); Melissa Melero-Moose (Reno, NV); Julio César Morales (Chandler, AZ); Demetrius Oliver (New York); Diego Rodriguez-Warner (Aurora, CO); Arvie Smith (Portland, OR); Edra Soto (Chicago); Cory Kamehanaokalā Holt Taum (Kahaluʻu, HI); Jordan Weber (Des Moines); and Didier William (Elkins Park, PA).
