Irvine, Calif., April 16, 2026 — University of California, Irvine studio art professor Monica Majoli has been awarded a 2026 John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship. As part of the 101^st class of fellows, she is among 223 artists, writers and scholars across 55 disciplines selected for this prestigious honor.

Guggenheim Fellowships have been bestowed annually since 1925 by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the arts. Each fellow receives a stipend to pursue independent work at the highest level under “the freest possible conditions.”

“I am pleased to congratulate Professor Monica Majoli on being awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship,” said Hal Stern, UC Irvine’s provost and executive vice chancellor. “This distinction highlights both her creative and scholarly contributions and the vitality of UC Irvine’s arts community as a center for education, research and creative engagement.”

Majoli has been a member of the UC Irvine faculty since 2006. Her practice spans painting, printmaking, photography, drawing and installation. Her work, including the Rubbermen series, has been featured in the Whitney Biennial and Berlin Biennial and is held in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Hammer Museum and the Getty Research Institute, among others.

She plans to use the Guggenheim Fellowship to support her project Ovulars, a body of work examining pioneering lesbian-feminist photographers in rural Oregon during the late 1970s and early 1980s, including related archival research and studio production.

UC Irvine alumnae Kate Merkel-Hess, Ph.D. ’09, and Samira Yamin, M.F.A. ’11, also received 2026 Guggenheim Fellowships.

The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation has given nearly $400 million in fellowships to more than 19,000 individuals, including over 125 Nobel laureates; members of all the National Academies; winners of the Pulitzer Prize, Fields Medal, Turing Award, Bancroft Prize and National Book Award; and recipients of other internationally recognized honors.

UC Irvine now has 61 Guggenheim Fellows from various backgrounds and fields of study.

About the University of California, Irvine: Founded in 1965, UC Irvine is a member of the prestigious Association of American Universities and is ranked among the nation’s top 10 public universities by U.S. News & World Report. The campus has produced five Nobel laureates and is known for its academic achievement, premier research, innovation and anteater mascot. Led by Chancellor Howard Gillman, UC Irvine has more than 36,000 students and offers 224 degree programs. It’s located in one of the world’s safest and most economically vibrant communities and is Orange County’s second-largest employer, contributing $7 billion annually to the local economy and $8 billion statewide. For more on UC Irvine, visit www.uci.edu.

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