Suchitra Mattai of Los Angeles Among 15 Recipients of the 2025 Joan Mitchell Fellowship

The New York–based Joan Mitchell Foundation on August 13 named fifteen recipients of its 2025 Joan Mitchell Fellowship. Each will receive an unrestricted $60,000 grant, to be disbursed over a five-year period. The fellows—who work across fields including painting, collage, sculpture, mixed media, and installation art—will also receive support in the form of networking opportunities and the chance to participate in workshops addressing topics such as artist interviews, financial literacy, and legacy planning.
The artists were selected via a multiphase jury process from among 157 applicants chosen by a diverse pool of eighty-one nominators from forty-one states and Puerto Rico; 43 percent of this year’s nominators were artists themselves. Representing eleven states, the 2025 cohort ranges in age from thirty to seventy-four.

Among the newly minted fellows are Gerald Clark, of Anza, California, a member of the Cahuilla Band of Indians whose conceptual work responds to ancient and contemporary Native life; Iranian-born artist Sara Rahbar, of Great Neck, New York, who explores themes of nationalism, separation, and belonging through sculptures and assemblages; and Lan Tuazon, of Chicago, whose sculptural installations and public monuments suggest ecological futures.

“I’m thrilled to congratulate this year’s Joan Mitchell Fellowship recipients—a group of esteemed creative practitioners whose work represents a broad range of stylistic approaches and themes, reflecting both their material explorations and their varied personal backgrounds,” said Christa Blatchford, executive director of the Joan Mitchell Foundation, in a statement. “Joan Mitchell was clear in her will that her foundation should support artists in their practices—a mandate that reflects Mitchell’s own deep and abiding commitment to her work as a painter and her strong belief in the importance of artists having the resources to thrive. As we celebrate the many facets of Mitchell’s legacy in her centennial year, we welcome the new Fellows to a remarkable community of artists that has grown out of Mitchell’s generosity, encompassing more than 1,200 former grant recipients, 365 former Artists-in-Residence, 75 Joan Mitchell Fellows, and hundreds of other artists and art students who have intersected with Mitchell’s legacy and the Foundation’s programs over the past three decades.”

Established in 2021, the fellowships reimagine the foundation’s previous Painters & Sculptors Grants, which it inaugurated in 1994, annually awarding twenty-five artists unrestricted $25,000 grants. The current model is meant to provide recipients with a steady income stream that will allow them to build their creative practices and careers.

A full list of recipients is below:

Gerald Clarke, Anza, CA 
Cathy Della Lucia, Boston
Bob Dilworth, Providence, RI 
Nancy Friedemann-Sánchez, Lincoln, NE 
Sahar Khoury, Oakland, CA 
Sammy Seung-min Lee, Denver
Brenda Mallory, Portland, OR 
Suchitra Mattai, Los Angeles
Troy Montes Michie, Los Angeles 
Sara Rahbar, Great Neck, NY 
Eric-Paul Riege, Gallup, NM
Juvana Soliven, Honolulu 
Linda Rotua Sormin, New York 
Lan Tuazon, Chicago
Anthony White, Seattle