CHICAGO — The MacArthur Foundation’s 2026 fellows class is putting major support behind work that examines Black music, racial economic inequality and overlooked American history, with each of the 20 recipients receiving an unrestricted $800,000 award over five years.
The foundation announced the class Tuesday, Sept. 29. Among the honorees are jazz saxophonist and composer Immanuel Wilkins, Princeton University labor economist Ellora Derenoncourt and Houston- and San Antonio-based visual artist Vincent Valdez.
The fellowships—often called “genius grants”—recognize exceptional creativity and future potential rather than funding a specific project. Recipients do not apply, and the money comes without a required spending plan or progress reports, according to Associated Press reporting published Tuesday.
Immanuel Wilkins connects jazz and Black history
Wilkins, 29, is the youngest member of the 2026 class. The Brooklyn-based alto saxophonist, bandleader and composer uses jazz to engage history while exploring new ways to represent the rhythm and movement of Black music.
His debut album, “Omega,” connects the 1918 lynching of Mary Turner in Georgia with the 2014 police killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. Wilkins told the AP that music’s abstraction lets him address those histories without reproducing their violence.
His work also questions whether traditional Western musical notation can fully capture swing and other elements central to Black music. Wilkins has experimented with visual art, sculptures and immersive performance as possible alternatives to conventional scores.
Ellora Derenoncourt studies the racial wealth divide
Derenoncourt, 39, is an associate professor of economics at Princeton whose research traces the origins of racial wealth and earnings disparities—and examines policies that have narrowed those gaps.
Her scholarship includes research showing that the Black-white earnings gap declined after Congress raised the federal minimum wage and extended wage protections to industries including agriculture, domestic service and health care. She has also studied how northern cities underinvested in education and recreation in communities that received millions of Black migrants leaving the South during the Great Migration.
Derenoncourt said she hopes the fellowship’s platform will help her explain economic justice issues to the public and policymakers. She has also warned that reduced access to workforce demographic data could make it harder for researchers to measure present-day racial inequality.
A Texas artist confronting forgotten history
Valdez, 49, divides his time between Houston and San Antonio. His large-scale paintings explore American identity, Mexican American life and historical events that dominant culture has often minimized or ignored.
His work has addressed racial terror, displacement and public memory. One recent body of work also draws on the public mourning of boxing legend Muhammad Ali. Valdez describes his artistic mission as a challenge to “social amnesia”—the tendency to forget difficult parts of the nation’s history.
The Texas artist is one of several fellows whose work crosses disciplines and uses history to illuminate current social questions. The full class includes artists, writers, historians, scientists, engineers and scholars working across three continents.
The MacArthur Fellows Program has operated since 1981. The foundation selects recipients through a confidential nomination and review process, with fellows chosen for both demonstrated accomplishment and the promise of future work.
For Wilkins, Derenoncourt and Valdez, the unrestricted award provides time and resources to expand work that links creative expression and scholarship to questions of race, memory, culture and economic opportunity.
