MacDowell

Composer and multi-instrumentalist Anthony Braxton is this year’s recipient of the prestigious Edward MacDowell Medal. Braxton will be awarded this summer for his immeasurable contribution to fields of music composition, pedagogy and writing. Over the past 50 years, Braxton has created a unique musical system that celebrates the concept of global creativity and our shared humanity. His work examines core principles of improvisation, structural navigation and ritual engagement—innovation, spirituality and intellectual investigation.    “I am honored that there are people who are open to my music and the world it creates and I am grateful to MacDowell for its recognition. I look forward to celebrating with friends, peers and the broader community that MacDowell has nurtured over its long history,” Anthony Braxton shared.     MacDowell, the nation’s oldest and preeminent artist residency program, has awarded the Medal annually since 1960 to giants of the art world, selecting individuals whose work has had an indelible impact on culture. ⁠    @dr.tyshawnsorey_official chaired this year’s Medal selection panel, which included luminaries of the music world including @marcosbalter , @miyamasaoka , Alex Ross ,@duyun , and @freesongsinger .     The presentation of the Edward MacDowell Medal in the Arts is a free, public event on June 28, 2026, which draws more than 1,000 visitors from around the country to MacDowell’s 450-acre wooded campus. It is the one day each year the grounds are open to the public, offering arts lovers the opportunity to visit 31 open, working studios to see art being created and speak with the artists-in-residence. ⁠ Portrait by @_codyoloughlin_

Announcing MacDowell’s Spring Summer 2026 Fellows with 134 Fellowships awarded to visionary artists working across seven disciplines, representing 27 states and Washington D.C., as well as 16 countries.     These distinguished artists will arrive at MacDowell’s historic campus in Peterborough, New Hampshire between March and August 2026, each with an average stay of four weeks. Selected from a highly competitive pool of 2,618 applicants, with an acceptance rate of 5 percent, Fellows are accepted solely based on the artistic excellence of their work, as evaluated by independent panels of discipline specific experts. An asterisk after a name is indicative of a returning MacDowell Fellow.     MacDowell’s Executive Director Chiwoniso Kaitano (@chiwoniso ) shares, “I am once again in awe of the remarkable talent arriving on our grounds this spring and summer. Representing seven disciplines and an extraordinary breadth of ideas, these artists—at every stage of their careers—are true groundbreakers. It is a deep honor for MacDowell to play even a small role in the impact our Fellows have on art and culture. Join us in welcoming this season’s Fellows, and follow along as we share their work.”    The names listed in this post include every individual awarded a Spring Summer 2026 residency at MacDowell as of March 2, 2026. For the finalized list of individuals who have or will have matriculated at MacDowell for this season of residencies, please refer to the press release available on macdowell.org/news

We’re thrilled to announce the NADA MacDowell Fellowship! Introduced on the Opening Day of NADA New York by Executive Director Heather Hubbs, the fellowship will provide an emerging artist with a residency at MacDowell’s New Hampshire campus in 2027. Applications will open this fall. Join us at at the fair this week for NADA Presents, with daily conversations and programs presented in partnership with MacDowell and ARTPOWER. #newartdealers #nadanewyork #macdowell

Composer, multi-instrumentalist, educator, and music theorist Anthony Braxton breaks down the Tri-Centric Thought Unit Construct. A pioneering force in contemporary music, Braxton’s expansive career spans jazz, opera, improvisation, and interdisciplinary composition. Join us on June 28 in Peterborough, New Hampshire, as we celebrate Braxton, the 66th Edward MacDowell Medalist. For more information, visit the link in our bio.

We are so honored to be included in this conversation at @newartdealers in partnership with @macdowell1907 ✨ Thursday, May 14, 2 PM — In Residence: Global, National, & Regional Collaboration Featuring Gabriel Florenz (Executive Director of Pioneer Works), Gordon Knox (Res Artis Board Member), and Katharina McCarty (Founder & Director of Eighth House). Moderated by arts and culture journalist Eileen Kinsella. This week, NADA is partnering with MacDowell—the nation’s longest-running artist residency—to present In Residence, a series of talks that bring together artists, institutional leaders, philanthropic partners, and cultural figures to examine artist residencies. Taking place from May 13-15 as part of NADA New York, these conversations will range from how institutions can innovate to better serve artists’ evolving needs, to what meaningful sustainability looks like for both artists and institutions, to how residencies operating at different scales can collaborate to strengthen the cultural ecosystem.

Award-winning filmmaker and five-time MacDowell Fellow Kimi Takesue (@kimitakesue ) has been added to The Criterion Collection, home to some of the world’s most celebrated films and filmmakers. “Directed by Takesue: Crossings and Encounters” premiered this month, launching 11 of her films on the Criterion Channel. Honored to have her work presented alongside cinematic giants such as Yasujirō Ozu, Federico Fellini, Jean-Luc Godard, Akira Kurosawa, and Abbas Kiarostami, Takesue describes this recognition as the greatest achievement of her filmmaking career. “The visually mesmerizing and deeply reflective films of Kimi Takesue traverse genres—including documentary, fiction, and experimental forms—to explore the charged spaces between observer and observed. Often centered on the act of travel, Takesue’s work follows tourists and locals as they navigate shared yet unequal terrain… Through her immersive long takes, Takesue invites audiences into moments of intimacy and unease that continually challenge our assumptions.” — @criterioncollection Congratulations, Kimi, on this extraordinary recognition and achievement! We are so proud to call you a friend and Fellow.

Bess Wohl’s ‘Liberation’ has won the 2026 Pulitzer Prize for Drama!   “An unadulterated pleasure. Powerfully moving and funny. When these women talk, we want to hear every word... Looks at community and individuality, determination and self-determination, in an elegiac and impassioned manner.” – The New York Times Set in 1970s Ohio, the play follows Lizzie, who gathers a group of women to talk about changing their lives and the world, drawing directly from the story of Wohl’s own mother and the consciousness-raising feminist groups of the era. Congratulations to two time MacDowell Fellow, Bess Wohl (@besswohl ‘10, ‘17) on this remarkable, well deserved win. Photos: Little Fang and Valerie Terranova

MacDowell Fellow Coleen Baik (@colbay ‘26) held May’s MacDowell Downtown audience captive as she presented three animated works and guided attendees through her evolving creative practice.   Baik’s first film, Tuscany, [slide 2] was drawn frame by frame in Photoshop over 15 months and explores fear, rebirth, and the cyclical nature of passage. Through her later films, Chamoe and 엄마 나라 | Mother Land, Baik developed new visual styles and animation techniques. The latter marked a shift toward a looser, more abstract narrative approach. She also experimented with phonotrope animation, a technique that uses a turntable and camera to reveal motion imperceptible to the naked eye.    Baik is now fully embracing hand-drawn animation in her newest film, Vespertine, created with graphite on index cards. She developed sequences for the film during her residency at MacDowell.

Join us next week for NADA Presents, a series of conversations and events at NADA New York, presented in partnership with MacDowell and ARTPOWER, May 13–17, 2026 at the Starrett-Lehigh building in West Chelsea. 🍎 View the full schedule of programs at the link in bio. For this year’s edition, NADA in collaboration with MacDowell—the nation’s longest running residency—will present In Residence, a series of talks that bring together artists, institutional leaders, philanthropic partners, and cultural figures to examine artist residences. Conversations will range from how institutions can innovate to better serve artists’ evolving needs, to what meaningful sustainability looks like for both artists and institutions, to how residencies operating at different scales—local, national, global—can collaborate to strengthen the cultural ecosystem. ARTPOWER, an artist-led company building the financial power of creative workers, will host a special live edition of the ARTPOWER Podcast during the fair. #newartdealers #nadanewyork

Virgil Thomson’s definition of music was famously “that which musicians do.” His compositions drew from the rhythms of everyday speech and the simple harmonies of the hymnbook, a distinctly American vernacular that set him apart from his European contemporaries.   Thomson was the 18th recipient of the MacDowell Medal. This year, we are honored to continue this tradition by presenting the 66th Medal to composer and multi-instrumentalist Anthony Braxton.   Please join us on June 28 in Peterborough, New Hampshire to celebrate Braxton’s contributions to contemporary music.
 
For more information on Medal Day, visit the link in our bio.

Directed by Leonardo Pirondi (@leo.pirondi ‘25) and produced by Paulo Carneiro (@paulo_carneiro_ ‘26), Tropical Fractals premieres this week at Indie Lisboa (@indielisboa ). Congratulations Fellows!    On an interstellar journey, a group of scientists studies the last living vestiges of Earth. The artificial intelligence, Museo, becomes a portal to the crew’s diaries and a fragmented archive of humanity. On Earth, the one believed to be the last of the humans traverses a ruined planet that is slowly recovering, little by little, from the apocalypse it endured.   May 07 2026, Thursday, 19:15 (72’)
Cinema São Jorge, Room Manoel de Oliveira • C.3   Pirondi’s films have been exhibited in various festivals, such as the Toronto International Film Festival, the Tiger Short Competition in Rotterdam, the New York Film Festival, Viennale, Mar del Plata, FICUNAM, BFI London, and Festival du Nouveau Cinéma. He is a Sundance Institute Fellow and holds B.F.A. and M.F.A. degrees in film from the California Institute of the Arts. #MadeAtMacDowell

Tangible Tale April 15 - May 29 The Mayor Gallery (@mayorgallery ) 9 Bury Street, London   For 25 years, Lisa Corinne Davis (@insta_lcd ‘17) has drawn on her lived experience to explore the complex relationship between race, culture, and systems of societal classification—questioning the human impulse to categorize. Her paintings layer warm, organic marks with warped geometric grids reminiscent of maps and genetic diagrams, creating surfaces that shift and pulse with hypnotic energy.   Inspired in part by falsified Soviet maps, her imagined geographies interrogate information, power, and belief. In an era shaped by surveillance and artificial intelligence, Davis’s work raises urgent questions about truth, trust, and the precarious nature of personal identity.