Top row, from left: Scott Anderson, Michaela Pilar Brown, Victoria Burge, Peggy Chiang, Ruby Chishti; Middle row, from left: Sharif Farrag, Emilie Louise Gossiaux, André Leon Gray, Joe Harjo, Rebecca Morris; Bottom row, from left: Gamaliel Rodríguez, Abigail Kahilikia Romanchak, Rupy C. Tut, Yvonne Wells, Sandy Williams IV. Photos: Renee Cox (Gray)/Anthony Francis (Harjo)/H. Delgado (Rodríguez)/Marissa Leshnov (Tut)/Joan Mitchell Foundation.
Among the newly named fellows are Joe Harjo, of San Antonio, whose installations investigate the erasure and misrepresentation of Native culture in America; Gamaliel Rodríguez, of Cabo Rojo, Puerto Rico, whose drawings explore the societal and economic impacts of extraction in his homeland; and Yvonne Wells of Tuscaloosa, Alabama, who deploys repurposed fabrics in so-called story quilts.
The artists were selected via a multiphase jury process from among 154 applicants chosen by a diverse pool of nominators from forty-five states; 53 percent of this year’s nominators were artists themselves, and 46 percent were first-time participants in the process. The 2024 cohort ranges in age from thirty-one to eighty-four, with 60 percent identifying as female and 7 percent as nonbinary. As well, many of the recipients identify as Black, Native American or Indigenous, Hispanic or Latino, or as being of Middle Eastern descent.
Established in 2021, the fellowships reimagine the foundation’s traditional Painters & Sculptors Grants, which it inaugurated in 1994, awarding twenty-five artists unrestricted grants of $25,000 annually. The current model is aimed at providing recipients with a steady income stream that will allow them to build their creative practices and careers.
“I am excited to welcome our 2024 Fellows, whose work represents new ideas and approaches in artmaking and for whom these unrestricted grants can have a transformative impact on their lives and their work,” said the foundation’s executive director, Christa Blatchford, in a statement. “During her lifetime, Joan Mitchell often offered personal assistance to other artists, and her directive for her foundation was to directly support artists. Throughout our 30-year history of grantmaking, our programs have continued to evolve in response to feedback from participating artists. The relaunch of the Joan Mitchell Fellowship in 2021 is an example of this ongoing process, exploring creative models that fulfill our mission and carry Mitchell’s legacy forwards.”
