The 101st class includes 223 distinguished individuals who are making their mark across 55 disciplines. Chosen through a rigorous application and peer review process from nearly 5,000 applicants, these fellows exemplify extraordinary prior achievements and exceptional promise.
As established in 1925 by founder and former Sen. Simon Guggenheim, each Fellow receives a monetary stipend to pursue independent work at the highest level under “the freest possible conditions.”
Lasley’s Guggenheim award will support “MUCKRAKERS,” a hybrid documentary that explores waste, labor, class, and climate migration in Humboldt County, co-directed with Art + Film Lecturer Nicola Waugh.
“‘MUCKRAKERS’ embodies the values of resourcefulness, equity, and collective care that have defined my work for the last two decades,” Lasley says. “It’s deeply affirming to see an institution like the Guggenheim valuing small, rural projects like this. With so much upheaval and change in this current moment, it’s important to look at small, rural communities like ours that have learned resilience by necessity.”
Blending documentary, fiction, and a climactic musical number, the film will be made in close collaboration with waste management workers and organizations in the region, as well as a diverse group of singers, musicians, and performers from Cal Poly Humboldt and the broader Humboldt County community. The score will be composed by award-winning Detroit-based producers Mike E. Clark (Insane Clown Posse, George Clinton, Patti Smith, and R.L. Burnside) and Chris Peters (Kid Rock, The Black Eyed Peas, Girls Aloud).
The film has also received funding support from the College of Arts, Humanities & Social Sciences, Cal Poly Humboldt’s Research, Scholarship, and Creative Activities Program, and the Humboldt Area Foundation.
Sarah Lasley is an award-winning filmmaker from Louisville, Kentucky, and an Associate Professor at Cal Poly Humboldt. Her no-budget films critique techno-utopianism with absurdist humor. She has screened internationally at Oscar- and BAFTA-qualifying festivals such as Slamdance, Ann Arbor, Big Sky, Athens International Film and Video Festival, Florida Film Festival, and London Short Film Festival, alongside renowned international arts festivals, including 25 FPS Festival, IN OUT Festival, and GRRL HAUS.
Her films have received glowing reviews from RogerEbert.com, Film Threat, No Film School, and The Washington Post, and her short “Welcome to the Enclave” won the Rotten Tomatoes Audience Award at the Chicago Critics Film Festival and was picked up for distribution on NoBudge and the Slamdance Channel. She has an MFA from Yale School of Art and was a resident at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture.
“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.”
The Guggenheim Foundation has always been committed to awarding fellowships at the highest level. Since its founding in 1925, the Foundation has awarded nearly $450 million in fellowships to more than 19,000 fellows. This year, applications in the creative arts and humanities were up by 50%, and applications in the sciences were up by 86%. At a time when intellectual and creative life is under attack, the Foundation continues to demonstrate its commitment to supporting extraordinary individuals breaking new ground in the creative arts, natural sciences, social sciences, humanities, and a range of interdisciplinary fields.
In all, 55 scholarly disciplines and artistic fields, 97 academic institutions, 33 U.S. 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.
To see the full list of the 2026 Fellows, please visit www.gf.org.
About the Guggenheim Foundation
Created and initially funded in 1925 by U.S. Sen. Simon and Olga Guggenheim in memory of their son John Simon, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation has sought to “further the development of scholars and artists by assisting them to engage in research in any field of knowledge and creation in any of the arts, under the freest possible conditions.”
Since its establishment, the Guggenheim 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. The broad range of fields of study is a unique characteristic of the Fellowship program. The Fellowship is application-based, and open to U.S. citizens or permanent residents.
The Guggenheim Foundation centers the talents and instincts of the Fellows, whose passions often have broad and immediate social impact. For example, in 1936, Zora Neale Hurston wrote Their Eyes Were Watching God with the support of a Guggenheim Fellowship and dedicated it to the Foundation’s first president, Henry Allen Moe. Photographer Robert Frank’s seminal book, The Americans, was the product of a cross-country tour supported by two Guggenheim Fellowships. The accomplishments of other early Fellows like e.e. cummings, Jacob Lawrence, Rachel Carson, James Baldwin, Martha Graham, and Linus Pauling also demonstrate the strength of the Guggenheim Foundation’s core values and the power and impact of its approach. More information at gf.org
