A 29-year-old Brooklyn saxophonist, a contemporary painter, and a Princeton economist all just found out they are getting $800,000 apiece, no strings attached, for work that keeps circling back to the same question: how does America's past keep shaping its present. They are three of the 20 people named to this year's MacArthur Fellows class, an honor commonly nicknamed the “genius grant.”
A Jazz Album That Links 1918 to 2014
Immanuel Wilkins is described by the MacArthur Foundation as an alto jazz saxophone player and composer who blends traditional jazz motifs with modern textures. His 2020 debut album, Omega, draws a line between the 1918 lynching of Mary Turner and the 2014 police killing of Michael Brown, according to the foundation. In an interview with the Philadelphia Inquirer, Wilkins said musical abstraction allows him to represent these stories without “recreating the violence of them.”
The MacArthur Foundation notes that Wilkins's music addresses historical narratives of injustice and resilience while giving voice to what it calls repeated and ongoing violence against African Americans. Per the Inquirer, Wilkins, 29, is the youngest member of this year's class of 20 MacArthur Fellows.
Painting the Klan, and Muhammad Ali's Funeral
Vincent Valdez, the second fellow honored this cycle, is a visual artist whose work depicts historical and present-day scenes reflecting Latino experiences and the contemporary United States, according to the MacArthur Foundation. His Dream Baby Dream series, completed in 2018, consists of 12 works depicting mourners and scenes from the television coverage of Muhammad Ali's funeral, the foundation says. His most recent series, It Was a Very Good Year, began in 2024 and explores how media can forge collective memories.
The foundation writes that Valdez goes beyond depicting past moments of injustice to interrogating how injustice, violence, and resistance persist in the present. As reported by the Associated Press, Valdez painted a 30-foot-wide work titled The City I, which depicts a modern Ku Klux Klan gathering with hooded figures holding a smartphone, a beer, and a Pikachu-toting baby. The AP also reports that Valdez has depicted the eviction of a mostly Mexican American community to make way for Dodger Stadium, and that he is currently working on The New Americans, the final installment of a trilogy meant to highlight overlooked pillars of society.
An Economist Tracing the Roots of the Racial Wealth Gap
Ellora Derenoncourt, the third fellow in this trio, is a labor economist and economic historian who studies the historical roots of racial disparities in wealth and economic mobility in the United States, per the MacArthur Foundation. She is an associate professor in Princeton University's Department of Economics, where she also founded and directs its Program for Research on Inequality, the foundation notes. Princeton University confirmed that Derenoncourt and fellow Princeton professor Elizabeth Ellis were both awarded 2026 MacArthur Fellowships, alongside Princeton graduate alum Kaiyu Guan, who was also named to this year's class.
Derenoncourt's 2022 study of the Great Migration found that Black Americans who moved from the South to Northern cities achieved some economic gains, but that economic prospects declined for subsequent generations, according to the MacArthur Foundation. She attributes that downward shift to backlash against the new arrivals and subsequent disinvestment in urban neighborhoods, the foundation says. Her 2021 research found that the 1966 expansion of the federal minimum wage — which extended protections to agriculture, domestic service, and health care — explained 20 percent of the Civil Rights-era drop in the racial earnings gap. A 2024 paper by Derenoncourt and co-authors found that the racial wealth gap has widened since the 1980s because earnings from investment assets have primarily benefited White households.
Speaking with the Inquirer, Derenoncourt said she would use the award to translate issues of economic justice for the broader public and interested policymakers.
No Applications, No Progress Reports
The MacArthur Fellows program doesn't accept applications — nominations come from outside sources, and the foundation says the awards recognize exceptional creativity, come with no strings attached, and require no progress reports from recipients. This year's class of 20 fellows spans the performing arts to the social sciences and includes recipients across three continents, with each person receiving $800,000 over five years, according to Princeton University's announcement.
Kristen Mack, the MacArthur Foundation's vice president of communications for fellows and partnerships, said the fellows explore humanity, reveal the origins of challenges, and expand scientific inquiry and life-saving research. Mack added that the fellows show new ways to understand the world.
