Immanuel Wilkins, a 29-year-old Brooklyn-based saxophonist, bandleader, and composer, received a surprise call from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation while riding an Amtrak train from New York to Philadelphia. The call confirmed his selection as a recipient of the foundation’s prestigious 2026 fellows class, a distinction often referred to as the “genius grant.” The fellowship provides each awardee with an $800,000 grant over five years, intended to support innovative work across a range of disciplines without specific obligations or reporting requirements.

This year’s cohort includes 20 individuals whose work spans fields such as the performing arts, social sciences, philosophy, and economics. The recipients, ranging in age by up to four decades and representing three continents, were recognized for their exceptional creativity and contributions to expanding knowledge and cultural understanding.

Wilkins, as the youngest fellow, has explored the intersections of history and music through his debut album Omega. The album draws poignant connections between the 1918 lynching of Mary Turner, a pregnant Black woman, and the 2014 killing of Michael Brown, a Black teenager, by police. He views jazz as a medium capable of representing traumatic histories through abstraction rather than literal reenactment. Beyond music composition, Wilkins is investigating new ways to visually represent jazz rhythms and the genre’s distinctive “swing,” including through sculptures and graphic scores, challenging conventional Western musical notation which he argues cannot fully capture the complexity of Black music.

Another fellow, Ellora Derenoncourt, an associate professor of economics at Princeton University, plans to leverage the fellowship’s platform to increase public and policymaker awareness of economic justice issues. Her research focuses on racial wealth disparities and their historical roots, highlighting moments when policy interventions narrowed income gaps. She expressed concern about the availability of reliable demographic data amid recent government rollbacks and intends to address these challenges through sustained scholarship and outreach.

Contemporary painter Vincent Valdez, also among the fellows, uses representational art to explore themes of American identity and social memory. Drawing from his Mexican American heritage, Valdez creates large-scale works that confront issues such as racial violence and cultural erasure. His trilogy, which includes the nine-meter-wide mural The City I, addresses historical and contemporary manifestations of racism and resilience. Valdez’s work often incorporates sports imagery, reflecting collective unity and cultural significance. He sees his art as a means to counteract what he terms “social amnesia” and foster a shared understanding of societal struggles.

The MacArthur Foundation’s fellowship program does not accept applications but relies on a confidential nominating process, aiming to provide recipients with the freedom to pursue their creative or scholarly endeavors without predetermined constraints. According to the foundation’s communications vice president, Kristen Mack, this year’s fellows exemplify efforts to deepen human understanding and expand inquiry across disciplines, offering new perspectives on history, culture, and science.