Our latest roundup of Pew Fellows news includes artists receiving recognition from Lincoln Center and the MacArthur Foundation, exhibitions and performances from Philadelphia and New York to Paris and Venice, and an upcoming trifecta of plays in Philadelphia by one Pulitzer Prize-winning Fellow.
Pew Fellows at Work in Philadelphia
The work of acclaimed playwright James Ijames (2015) returns to the stage in his hometown three times in early 2026. On January 8, Good Bones opens at Philadelphia’s Arden Theatre Company, followed on March 17 by The Most Spectacularly Lamentable Trial of Miz Martha Washington at the Wilma Theater. His latest work, Wilderness Generation, makes its world premiere at Philadelphia Theatre Company on April 10, and the organizations have partnered to offer “The James Ijames Citywide Pass,” a three-ticket package to see the whole run. “I am where I am because a lot of theaters in Philadelphia took a chance on me,” Ijames tells the Philadelphia Inquirer.
An immersive exhibition by multimedia artist Michelle Lopez (2024) is on view at Philadelphia’s Franklin Institute and Moore College of Art & Design through December 6, 2025. Utilizing sculpture, mixed media, and 4D film, Pandemonium contemplates global disasters, both meteorological and man-made. In a key piece of the exhibition, audiences sit on the floor of the Franklin’s Fels Planetarium and are transported to the eye of a tornado, gazing up at a swirl of cultural debris like newspaper headlines and scraps of flags.
Pew Fellows Around the Globe
Body Vessel Clay: Black Women, Ceramics & Contemporary Art, a group exhibition at the Ford Foundation, spotlights three generations of Black women exploring culture and heritage through clay. Among the artists featured is visual artist Adebunmi Gbadebo (2022). The exhibition opened in September and is on view at the gallery until December 6, 2025. In addition, Gbadebo was featured in The New Yorker in October following a solo show, Watch Out for the Ghosts, at Manhattan’s Nicola Vassell Gallery earlier this year, and is part of the Clay As Care group exhibition in Philadelphia alongside another Pew Fellow, Maia Chao (2022), on view until December 31, 2025.
Composer and sound artist Raven Chacon (2020) is one of 23 artists included in the 2025 MOMENTA Biennale in Montréal. Curated by Marie-Ann Yemsi, In Praise of the Missing Image explores “both contemporary challenges in relation to the image and the current consequences of the complex dynamics involved in constructing narratives,” according to the press release. The Biennale includes exhibitions and various programming through March 2026.
Chacon is slated to return to Philadelphia, as well. He is one of two artists creating work at Calder Gardens in the coming year. As senior director of programming Juana Berrío told the Philadelphia Inquirer, “Raven will create from a musical perspective, see how he could be in dialogue with this space...There’s going to be musical and sonic experiences here, in different areas of the building. I want to make sure that every single space is activated.”
Visual artist Alex Da Corte’s (2012) Kermit the Frog, Even hovered over the Place Vendôme as part of the Art Basel Paris Public Program in Paris October 24–26. Da Corte's semi-deflated Muppet was inspired by the 1991 Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade and speaks to American culture and the notion of staying in character and upholding a charade.
Interdisciplinary artist Camae Ayewa (2017) of Black Quantum Futurism, whose music under the name Moor Mother incorporates experimental electronic textures and spoken word, debuted a new work at the Venice Biennale Musica. Named for the Congolese uranium mine linked to the creation of the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Shinkolobwe was performed with multi-instrumentalists Aquilles Navarro, Simon Sieger, and Aho Ssan, and is described by Ayewa as a “searing, non-linear sonic excavation of trauma, resistance, and the invisible scars of extractive capitalism.”
Awards & Recognition
Filmmaker Ted Passon (2014) won a Creative Arts Emmy Award for exceptional merit in documentary filmmaking for his film Patrice: The Movie. The film follows Patrice Jetter and Gary Wickham, a New Jersey couple who are fighting for marriage equality for people with disabilities. While accepting the award on stage, Jetter said, “We made this movie as a love letter to all the disabled people like us who can’t get married or even live with their partner without losing their Medicaid benefits, which they need in order to survive," according to a story in The Philadelphia Inquirer. The documentary is currently streaming on Hulu.
Filmmaker Shehrezad Maher’s (2023) short The Curfew received a Jury Special Prize at the 33rd Hamptons International Film Festival (HIFF) in October. The film, which tells the story of a first-generation Pakistani American caring for his frail grandmother, was also screened at the Venice International Film Festival in September of this year.
Multimedia artist James Allister Sprang (2022) has been named a Lincoln Center 2025-26 Collider Fellow. The nine-month residency program supports six artists "working at the vanguard of their fields," writes Lincoln Center. The residency provides studio space for the development of new media art and immersive experiences and includes a financial stipend. With this support, Sprang says he'll be developing a "spatialized musical score featuring steel pan, accompanied by photographs conjured at Caribbean Carnivals around the world."
Musician King Britt (2007) has been appointed the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Endowed Chair in Digital Media and Learning. This is a five-year position that is meant to “explore ways digital media can impact how youth engage in learning and prepare them for success in their education, career and civic life.”
New Releases
After being a featured player on two albums earlier this year, percussionist Chad E. Taylor (2024) returns with new music from his own quintet. The new LP Smoke Shifter, released November 14 via Otherly Love Records, finds Taylor sharing composition duties with his bandmates. In an interview with Jazz Times, he reflects on creating space for everyone to bring ideas to the table: “I’ve been very successful doing that with other people’s records. So when I have my own group, I want to give others the same opportunities that were given to me.” Previously this year, Taylor appeared on Hyperglypth by Chicago Underground Duo and Live In Philadelphia by Pew Fellow Marshall Allen’s (2012) Ghost Horizons.
Harpist and composer Mary Lattimore (2014) teams up with ambient musician Julianna Barwick on Tragic Magic, a new collaborative album releasing January 16 via the InFiné label. The record boasts six new compositions, including a song British composer Roger Eno wrote for Barwick and Lattimore. Barwick describes the project as a work of “musical telepathy,” and the duo will tour Europe and North America in 2026.
The work of late poet Essex Hemphill (1957-1995) returns to print with the new collection Love Is a Dangerous Word: Selected Poems, published by New Directions Publishing. A 1993 Fellow, Hemphill was an early advocate for intersectionality in the Black and gay communities, and his poetry, writes Daniel Felsenthal in The Nation, crossed boundaries and "merged cultural worlds."
