April 16, 2026

2025 Commencement speaker Kyle Abraham and former visiting faculty member Fern Silva were also among the 2026 awardees.

The 2026 awards were given to a diverse group of 223 Fellows comprising writers, scholars, artists, and scientists. Appointed on the basis of prior achievement and exceptional promise, the successful candidates were chosen from a group of almost 5,000 applicants in the Foundation’s 101st competition.

“I am thrilled to offer my congratulations to Beatriz, jaamil, and Molly on their tremendous achievement of being named 2026 Guggenheim Fellows,” said Elissa Tenny, Interim President of Bennington College. “Bennington College is an incubator of thought provoking, original scholarship, artwork, and innovation, and we are proud that our tremendous network of faculty and alumni are recognized for this impactful work."

Beatriz Santiago Muñoz is an artist whose expanded moving image work is entangled with Boalian theater, expanded cinema and feminist practices. She tends to work with non-actors, and incorporates improvisation into her process. Her recent work is on the sensorial unconscious of anti-colonial movements and feminist experiments with language and narrative. Recent exhibitions include: the 34th Sao Paulo Biennial, the Momenta Biennale in Montreal and Art of the Real at Lincoln Center, among others. Her work is part of public and private collections such as the Museum of Modern Art, Guggenheim and Kadist. She has received a Creative Capital grant, a USA Fellowship, a Herb Alpert Award in the Arts and the 2021 Artes Mundi Prize which was shared among all 7 nominees. Santiago Muñoz joined the Bennington faculty in Spring 2023.

jaamil olawale kosoko '05 is a transdisciplinary artist, poet, and educator whose work spans performance, video, sculpture, and ritual to explore Black queer embodiment, cultural memory, and collective healing. kosoko's acclaimed works—including Black Body Amnesia, Chameleon, Séancers, and the Bessie-nominated #negrophobia—have toured internationally to leading venues and festivals across North America and Europe. A 2022 Slamdance Jury Prize winner and Pew Fellow in the Arts, kosoko’s honors also include MacDowell, La Becque, and NYFA fellowships. As a curator and educator, they’ve shaped programming at New York Live Arts, 651 Arts, and The Watermill Center, and regularly lecture at Princeton University and The University of the Arts. Grounded in Black study, spiritual practice, and embodied poetics, Kosoko approaches education and politics as integral to creative process. Their work invites new vocabularies for care, liberation, and transformation across communities and disciplines. kosoko was a visiting faculty member in Fall 2024 and Summer 2025.

Molly Rose Lieber '21 received a “Bessie” Award for Outstanding Performer and has performed in works by luciana achugar, Malcolm-x Betts, Oren Barnoy, Wally Cardona, Keely Garfield, Maria Hassabi, Antonio Ramos, Melinda Ring, Donna Uchizono, among other experimental artists. Her recent project with Wally Cardona, TIMESFOUR/David Gordon:1975/2025, is one of The New York Times “Best Dance Performance of 2025” and heads to the American Dance Festival in May of 2026. Molly worked alongside dancing in New York hospitals and clinics as an IBCLC (International Board Certified Lactation Consultant) supporting families with chestfeeding/breastfeeding, and her research article Queering Lactation was awarded the 2023 Women’s and Gender Studies Paper Award through the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. While earning her MFA in Dance and Graduate Certificate in Women’s and Gender Studies, Molly received UWM’s Distinguished Graduate Student Fellowship and The Florence S. Healy Scholarship for Feminist Studies. Molly has taught at Sarah Lawrence College, Rutgers University, Bennington College, and The New School. She currently teaches as an Adjunct Assistant Professor of Dance and Women’s and Gender Studies at Queens College (CUNY).

In all, 55 scholarly disciplines and artistic fields, 97 academic institutions, 33 US states and the District of Columbia, three Canadian provinces, and eight countries beyond the United States and Canada are represented in the 2026 class. The Fellows range in age from 28 to 76, and around one third do not hold a full-time affiliation with a college or university. Fellows' projects grapple with timeless themes and timely issues. They explore the promise and perils of artificial intelligence, propose life-changing advancements in medical technology, unearth the historical roots of contemporary crises, and forge new directions in artistic expression.  

“Our new class of Guggenheim Fellows is representative of the world’s best thinkers, innovators, and creators in art, science, and scholarship,” said Edward Hirsch, award-winning poet and President of the Guggenheim Foundation. “As the Foundation enters its second century and looks to the future, I feel confident that this new class of 223 individuals will do bold and inspiring work, undaunted by the challenges ahead. We are honored to support their visionary contributions.”   

Created in 1925, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation has granted nearly $450 million in Fellowships to more than 19,000 individuals, among whom are more than 125 Nobel laureates, members of all the national academies, winners of the Pulitzer Prize, Fields Medal, Turing Award, Bancroft Prize, National Book Award, and other internationally recognized honors.

For more information on the Fellows and their projects, please visit the Foundation’s website.

Guggenheim Fellowships by Bennington Alumni and/or Faculty Members:

2025: Jonathan Lethem '86

2024: Modesto Flako Jimenez '06; Safiya Sinclair '10; Justin Torres, former faculty

2023: Mariam Ghani, faculty; Liz Lerman ’69

2022: Colin Brant, former visiting faculty; Melissa Febos, former Bennington Writing Seminars faculty member; Michael Pollan '76 

2020: J Blackwell '95, faculty; Jenny Boully, faculty; Helen Mirra '91; Garth Greenwall, visiting writer

2019: Carmen Giménez Smith, former Bennington Writing Seminars faculty; Karen Hartman, former faculty; Christopher Merrill, former Bennington Writing Seminars faculty member; Sam Pluta, former faculty

2018: Amy Gerstler MFA '00

2017: Fiona Maazel MFA ’02; Elana Herzog '76; Jen Liu, former faculty; Melinda Ring MFA '01

2014: Claire Vaye Watkins, Bennington Writing Seminars faculty; Pier Consagra, former visiting artist

2013: J. C. Hallman, former Bennington Writing Seminars faculty; Major Jackson, former Bennington Writing Seminars faculty; Ann Pibal, faculty; Carlin Romano, former faculty; Cora Cohen '64; Anne Waldman '66; Carrie Moyer '82; Terese Svoboda, former faculty 

2012: Lia Purpura, former Bennington Writing Seminars visiting writer; Benjamin Taylor, former faculty 

2011: Patricia Volk, former Bennington Writing Seminars faculty; Jonathan Haynes, former faculty; DD Dorvillier '89

2010: Mary Lum, emerita faculty; Peter Trachtenberg, former Bennington Writing Seminars faculty; Marta Ptaszyńska, former faculty; Sarah Stanbury '71

2009: Ralph Lemon, former faculty 

2008: Michael Burkard, former Bennington Writing Seminars faculty; Ann Goldstein '71; Laurie R. Godfrey '67; Myrna Packer '74; Reginald Shepherd ’88; Martha Graham, former faculty 

2007: Maria Flook, former Bennington Writing Seminars faculty

2006: Cristian Amigo, faculty; Yoko Inoue, faculty; Douglas G. Biow '79

2005: Mark Slouka, former Bennington Writing Seminars faculty; Henri Cole, former faculty 

2003: April Bernard, former Bennington Writing Seminars faculty

2002: Mary L. Ruefle '74, former visiting faculty; Nicholas Brooke, faculty; Ralph Lee, former faculty

2001: Brian Morton, former Bennington Writing Seminars faculty; George Packer, former Bennington Writing Seminars faculty

2000: Amy Hempel, former Bennington Writing Seminars faculty; Milford Graves, emeritus faculty

1999: Bernard Cooper, former Bennington Writing Seminars faculty; Susan Rethorst '74

1998: David Gates, former Bennington Writing Seminars faculty; Ain Gordon, former faculty; Barbara Bloom '72; Kenji Fujita ’78; Judith Butler '78

1995: Eve Sussman '84

1994: Sven Birkerts, former Director of Bennington Writing Seminars and faculty; Kevin E. Bubriski MFA ’97; Sidney Tillim, former faculty; Andrew Spence, former faculty 

1993: Kathleen Norris ’69

1991: David M. Brody ’81

1990: Lynn Freed, former Bennington Writing Seminars faculty; Dr. Bonnie Costello '72

1989: Pamela Avril Tucker MA ’80

1988: David Gates, former Bennington Writing Seminars faculty; Phillip Lopate, former Bennington Writing Seminars faculty; Gretel Ehrlich '67

1987: David Gordon, former faculty; Alec J. Wilkinson '74; Liz Phillips '73; Sally Mann '71

1985: Liam Rector, former Director of Bennington Writing Seminars and faculty; Brower Hatcher, former faculty; Arturo Vivante, former faculty; Deirdre Bair, former faculty 

1984: Susan Cheever, former Bennington Writing Seminars faculty; Lynne Sharon Schwartz, former Bennington Writing Seminars faculty

1983: Cynthia Lee Macdonald '50

1982: Laura Furman '68

1981: Sara Rudner MFA ’99

1980: Mary Oliver, former faculty 

1980: Vivian Fine, former faculty 

1978: Elizabeth Swados '73

1977: Kathryn Posin ’65; Joan Tower '61; Barbara Herrnstein Smith, former faculty 

1975: Edward Hoagland, former Bennington Writing Seminars faculty; Pril Smiley’65

1974: Jill Hoffman '59

1972: Donald Hall, former Bennington Writing Seminars faculty

1970: Patricia Johanson '62; Eugene Goossens, former faculty 

1969: Stanley Edgar Hyman, former faculty 

1968: Howard Nemerov, former faculty 

1967: Alwin Nikolais '40

1964: Edward Hoagland, former Bennington Writing Seminars faculty

1963: Donald Hall, former Bennington Writing Seminars faculty

1959: Helen F. Codere, former faculty 

1946: Henry Brant, former faculty 

1945: Ben Belitt, former faculty 

1942: W. H. Auden, former faculty

1937: Robert G. McBride, former faculty 

1935: Kenneth Burke, former faculty 

1928: Léonie Adams, former faculty