The Guggenheim Fellowship at 100: A New Special Exhibit Celebrating a Century of Cultural Impact

(New York, NY—August 4, 2025) – The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation – home to the Guggenheim Fellowships – celebrates a century of cultural impact with a special exhibit that chronicles the organization’s rich history and profound influence on American intellectual life and creative achievement. Titled The Guggenheim Fellowship at 100, this limited run presentation at The New York Historical opens August 29, 2025, and will explore the vast and rarely seen archives of the Foundation and spotlight some of the most notable Guggenheim Fellows over the last century. The exhibit is included in admission to The New York Historical, and will be displayed inside the main lobby as part of the Leah & Michael Weisberg Monumental Treasures Wall. 

On view through November 30, 2025, The Guggenheim Fellowship at 100 will present seldom seen letters, photos, books, and applications from Guggenheim Fellows including writers, scholars, scientists, and artists such as Ansel Adams, Alvin Ailey, Hannah Arendt, James Baldwin, Rachel Carson, Aaron Copland, Robert Frank, Martha Graham, Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Barbara McClintock, Thelonius Monk, Linus Pauling, F. Sherwood Rowland, Oliver Sacks, and many more. 

Over the last century, the Guggenheim Foundation has supported over 19,000 exceptional writers, scholars, scientists and artists, adding to the cultural, scholarly, and scientific power of our country. Guggenheim Fellows have created forward-thinking art, made world-changing discoveries, given voice to all manner of experience, and answered some of our society’s biggest questions. 

To see the full list of the 2025 Fellows and explore a century of Guggenheim Fellows, please visit gf.org.  

The exhibit is curated by Hanna Pennington, Archivist and Associate Director, Guggenheim Foundation; and Saray Vazquez, Assistant Curatorial Coordinator, The New York Historical. 

Exhibition Highlights 

Among the more than 70 artifacts and reproductions on view, the exhibit will feature:

• Letters between Foundation leaders, such as president Henry Allen Moe, and several Fellows, including Rachel Carson, Aaron Copland, Isaac Fisher, Martha Graham, Zora Neale Hurston, F. Sherwood Rowland, Edward Weston, and more. 

• Applications and related materials from figures such as Alvin Ailey, James Baldwin, John Cage, Maya Deren, Dorothea Lange, Jacob Lawrence, Barbara McClintock, Vladimir Nabokov, Thelonius Monk, Oliver Sacks, and more. 

• Photographs by Ansel Adams, Robert Frank, Edward Weston, and more. 

• Books by Younghill Kang, Dorothea Lange, Alan Lomax, Rachel Carson, Linus Pauling, Hannah Arendt, Ada Louise Huxtable, Zora Neale Hurston, Gwendolyn Brooks, Louise Erdrich, and more. 

The Guggenheim Fellowship at 100

On view August 29, 2025 – November 30, 2025

New York Historical

170 Central Park West

New York, NY 10024

More info: https://www.nyhistory.org/exhibitions/the-guggenheim-fellowship-at-100

About the Guggenheim Foundation

Created and initially funded in 1925 by US Senator Simon and Olga Guggenheim in memory of their son John Simon, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation has sought to “further the development of scholars and artists by assisting them to engage in research in any field of knowledge and creation in any of the arts, under the freest possible conditions.”

Since its establishment, the Guggenheim Foundation has granted over $400 million in Fellowships to more than 19,000 individuals, among whom are more than 125 Nobel laureates, members of all the national academies, winners of the Pulitzer Prize, Fields Medal, Turing Award, Bancroft Prize, National Book Award, and other internationally recognized honors. The broad range of fields of study is a unique characteristic of the Fellowship program.

The Guggenheim Foundation centers the talents and instincts of the Fellows, whose passions often have broad and immediate social impact. For example, in 1936, Zora Neale Hurston wrote Their Eyes Were Watching God with the support of a Guggenheim Fellowship and dedicated it to the Foundation’s first president, Henry Allen Moe. Photographer Robert Frank’s seminal book, The Americans, was the product of a cross-country tour supported by two Guggenheim Fellowships. The accomplishments of other early Fellows like e.e. cummings,  Jacob Lawrence, Rachel Carson, James Baldwin, Martha Graham, and Linus Pauling also demonstrate the strength of the Guggenheim Foundation’s core values and the power and impact of its approach. More information at gf.org.

About The New York Historical

New York’s first museum, The New York Historical is a leading cultural institution covering over 400 years of American history. Our offerings span groundbreaking exhibitions; peerless collections of art, documents, and artifacts; acclaimed educational programs for teachers and students nationwide; and thought-provoking conversations among leading scholars, journalists, and thinkers about the past, present, and future of the American experiment. The New York Historical is a museum of museums and a collection of collections. We are home to the Patricia D. Klingenstein Library, the Center for Women’s History, the DiMenna Children’s History Museum, and the future American LGBTQ+ Museum. We elevate the perspectives and scholarship that define the United States’ democratic heritage and challenge us all to shape our ongoing history for the better. Connect with us at nyhistory.org or at @nyhistory on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and Tumblr.

Contact: Sue Mellin, John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, smellin@gf.org
Contact: Eric Gewirtz, Rubenstein, egewirtz@rubenstein.com

Image: Robert Frank (1924–2019), Parade—Hoboken, New Jersey, 1955. Gelatin silver print. © The June Leaf and Robert Frank Foundation, from The Americans