Should You Apply for the Guggenheim Fellowship?

So you’ve applied for the Guggenheim Fellowship for five years in a row, and still haven’t gotten it? That’s “early days” for this award, says Paddy Johnson in this especially juicy and candid edition of her advice column Art Problems. Read it to learn what artists should consider when deciding whether to spend a month out of their lives putting together a multi-page application, or doing literally anything else (learning an obscure language? Authoring a short memoir?)

We’ve got a stacked newsletter to start your week. Critic Seph Rodney reviews Miles Greenberg’s immersive video installations at the Current in Stowe, Vermont, which plunge viewers in the artist’s durational performances, and Daniela Mayer takes us through this year’s Recontres d’Arles, the influential photo festival in France.

Ah, Gustave Courbet, you would have loved the Vulva Gala — an annual celebration where artists don intricate vulva costumes in a gesture of body positivity and self-expression. See the most inventive outfits, adorned with everything from piercings to political messaging.

—Valentina Di Liscia, senior editor

Art Problems: How Do I Get the Guggenheim Fellowship?

Almost everyone gets rejected. Almost everyone applies more than once. Is it worth doing? That answer depends on information I don’t have.

Let’s start with your time. The application process takes a lot of it. If you don’t have much time, don’t apply. The Foundation requests two four-page documents outlining your art-making plan for the year and your qualifications; three references; a list of significant work; work samples; and other basic information about yourself.

You don’t put all of that together in a couple of hours. Most artists I work with spend at least a month on the application. | Paddy Johnson

UT Austin’s Harry Ransom Center Provides Funded Fellowships in the Arts and Humanities

The humanities library and museum will award up to 50 fellowships to support scholars, artists, and writers conducting on-site archival research.

Learn more

News

Maya Lin, the architect and artist behind the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, DC, and the Civil Rights Memorial in Alabama, will debut her next public art commission in April 2027 at the University of Texas at Austin.
As part of the School of Sexuality Project’s 2026 “Vulva Gala,” artists dressed in handmade vulva costumes paraded down the aisle of a church in Long Beach as part of a community-centered celebration centering on approachable, destigmatized learning.