In an era when living as an active practitioner demands equal parts creative daring and financial endurance, direct patronage remains the vital lifeblood of culture. This week, the New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA), in its historic forty-year partnership with the New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA), announced the recipients of the 2026 NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellowship.

Distributing $903,000 across 132 artists—selected from a rigorous pool of 3,985 applicants—the program grants $8,000 unrestricted cash awards to fellows living across New York State and its Tribal Nations, with finalists receiving $1,000. Rotating across fifteen artistic categories on a triennial cycle, this year’s review focused on five distinct disciplines: nonfiction literature, poetry, craft/sculpture, digital/electronic arts, and printmaking/drawing/book arts.

Beyond the capital injection, the 2026 cohort serves as a pulse check on the state of contemporary art making—offering a vivid snapshot of how creators are processing technology, mortality, and physical territory.

Navigating the Frontier: AI, Mortality, and Political Space

Reviewing thousands of submissions across the Empire State, the selection panels noted a distinct thematic convergence: artists are increasingly preoccupied with identity, mediated communication, and an overarching reckoning with artificial intelligence. Rather than treating emerging technologies as mere utilitarian tools, fellows across digital and electronic arts are interrogating how machine learning redefines human agency and expression.

Concurrently, a return to visceral, fundamental human realities echoes through tactile media. In printmaking, drawing, and book arts, several awardees explore funerary traditions and burial practices, channeling print’s capacity for repetition and memory into quiet reflections on mortality.

Meanwhile, within craft and sculpture, practitioners are dissecting the political dimensions of space—turning physical armatures, raw clay, and carved timber into investigations of geography, displacement, and institutional power.

Perhaps the most compelling observation from the 2026 review board is the definitive dissolving of traditional category walls. Creators no longer occupy singular mediums; they operate fluidity across hybrid disciplines.

Among this year’s prominent fellows are creators whose practices intentionally resist easy categorization:

• Jesús Hilario-Reyes: Describing their practice as an “anti-disciplinary” endeavor, Hilario-Reyes weaves performance, sound, and installation to dismantle rigid spatial structures.
• Rebecca Shapass: A filmmaker operating in digital arts whose moving-image works seamlessly blend lyrical abstraction with documentary sensibilities.
• Leekyung Kang: A mixed-media printmaker expanding paper and ink into architectural dialogues between digital rendering and physical surface.

Validation Beyond the Dollar: The Human Cost of Creation

While an $8,000 grant offers tangible relief against the rising costs of living in New York, the psychological validation of state-level recognition carries profound weight for artists navigating marginalized paths.

The dream of the first-born child of immigrants is always to succeed (in whatever way that means for the family). Receiving this grant is more than the money; although money is really important for an artist & can help in easing the burden of what the cost of living has become in this country. But no, this grant also means that the work I am creating & have created is worthwhile—it allows me to go back to my family & say: look, I am writing poems, and I am happy and also, you might say I am successful at it.

— Yesenia Montilla, 2026 NYSCA/NYFA Poetry Fellow.

— Yesenia Montilla, 2026 NYSCA/NYFA Poetry Fellow

2026 Visual Arts Fellows and Finalists

Craft/Sculpture

• Recipients: Paria Ahmadi (New York), Patricia Encarnacion (Bronx), julien feller (Essex), Aaron Feltman (Ulster), Sasha Fishman (Kings), Danielle Gadus (Kings), Covey Gong (New York), Jesús Hilario-Reyes (Kings), Alex Ito (Queens), Paloma Izquierdo (Kings), Emily Janowick (Queens), Melissa Joseph (Kings), Tamiko Kawata (New York), Catherine Telford Keogh (New York), Ellie Krakow (New York), Megan Mi-Ai Lee (New York), Chico MacMurtrie (Kings), Jeffrey Meris (New York), Kristyna and Marek Milde (Kings), Anna Ting Möller (Kings), Brian Oakes (Kings), Saman & Sasan Oskouei (Queens), Chelsey Pettyjohn (Kings), Vartan Poghosian (Oneida), Lina Puerta (New York), lucía reissig (Kings), Alvaro Villa (Westchester), Patrice Renee Washington (Orange), Anne Wu (Queens), JAYOUNG YOON (Dutchess).
• Finalists: Rachel Dana (Kings), courtney puckett (Dutchess), Sabri Sundos (Kings).

Digital/Electronic Arts

• Recipients: Zain Alam (Kings), Kabir Carter (Kings), Leo Chang (Queens), Simon Deschamps (Ulster), alexa dexa (Suffolk), Maria F. Izaguirre (Queens), Umber Majeed (Kings), MAYSUN (Kings), Emmett Palaima (Kings), Lisa Ann Schonberg (Kings), rebecca shapass (Kings), Samantha Simmons (Queens), Yeseul Song (New York), Hans Tammen (Kings), Hakan Topal (Kings), Frank WANG Yefeng (New York), elekhlekha อีเหละเขละขละ (Kings).
• Finalists: ashley middleton (Ulster), Stephanie Rothenberg (Erie), Elia Vargas (Erie).

Printmaking/Drawing/Book Arts

• Recipients: ¡AGITPOP! Press (Johannah Herr & Cara Marsh Sheffler) (Kings), Tatiana Arocha (Kings), Andrew Brischler (Kings), Melissa Dadourian (Ulster), Marisol Diaz-Gordon (Bronx), Andy Van Dinh (New York), Oasa DuVerney (Kings), Amaryllis R Flowers (Greene), Linda M. Ganjian (Queens), Luis A. Gutierrez (Queens), Edgar Jerins (New York), Leekyung Kang (Kings), Kyung-Me (Queens), Kakyoung Lee (Kings), Priyanka Dasgupta & Chad Marshall (New York), Anette Millington (Dutchess), Kenneth Millington (Dutchess), Azita Moradkhani (Queens), Diana Schmertz (New York), Jacquelyn Strycker (Kings), Pedro Troncoso (Bronx), Trevor Wilson (Delaware), Chang Yuchen (Queens).
• Finalists: Kelli Anderson (Kings), Zorawar Sidhu and Rob Swainston (New York), Carol Wax (Westchester).

By investing directly in visionaries who challenge aesthetic and socio-political boundaries, the NYSCA/NYFA Fellowship reaffirms that art is not a luxury, but a vital public mirror.