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Nine images of landscapes, all featuring bodies of water, displayed on a surround-style projector. Two low-top rectangular benches are dimly lit in the center of what appears to be an exhibition-style projector room.

Going to Water by Postcommodity (Cristóbal Martínez and Kade L. Twist), 2021.

Photo by Blaine Campbell, courtesy of Remai Modern Museum.

Features

2024 Year in Review

Highlights from another year of believing in artists.

Author -USA Staff Date -12.05.2024

A strong spirit of collaborative learning drives USA’s work, in leadership, fellowship, and partnership. This year was no less impactful to USA, as we continue to learn from supporting artists' livelihoods. We understand that this work must take place in multiple ways, reaching artists and cultural laborers not just in daily practice, but when impacted by global and personal life events. 

USA continues to support artists through awards and providing platforms for their work. In the summer of 2024, we redesigned our website with a special focus on editorial opportunities for creative practitioners. As part of the website redesign project, we began working with Prime Access Consulting (PAC), a team of disability experts, to ensure this primary channel remains accessible to all visitors. Over the year, we also expanded our policy research and advocacy work, sharing important learnings and collaborating with peers in the field with valuable expertise. We supported all of these efforts by welcoming key new members to our staff.  

As always, we thank you for your continued support as we embark on a new year of growing together. We look forward to announcing the 2025 USA Fellows on January 30, 2025. In the meantime, we are proud to share some additional highlights from the past year. 

USA Awards

This year’s fifty USA Fellows, hailing from twenty-two states and Puerto Rico, expand our definitions of beauty and belonging by engaging us in a collective responsibility to imagine and invest in our future. They were selected for their artistic vision, contributions to the field, and the potential impact of the award on their practice. In July, we awarded Beth Boone the Berresford Prize, an award honoring significant contributions to the advancement, wellbeing, and care of artists, for tenacious community-building with artists in Miami.

“This fellowship will grant me access to the most precious mid-life commodity of time. It’s also quite a gorgeous affirmation of my intention for my labor as an artist (amongst my many other identities) to be one of my lasting contributions to the creative field.”
Helen Lee, 2024 USA Fellow in Craft. UrbanGlass.
  • A woman dressed in gray pants and a rain jacket examines strips of film hanging on a laundry line in the backyard of a house. She is surrounded by green foliage.

    Sofía Gallisá Muriente, 2024 USA Fellow in Visual Art, examining film strips behind the scenes of her 2020 film Celaje.

    Photo by Néstor Delgado Morales.

  • In a studio space, a performer playing the keyboard faces away from the camera and looks down at musical notation. Facing the camera is another musician whose face is covered by a mask with a screen attached to it, showing glinting electronic lights.

    Cristóbal Martinez, 2024 USA Fellow in Media, performing 4 Cycles + 1 with Post-Mexican Composer Guillermo Galindo in the ensemble Red Culebra.

    Photo courtesy of the artist.

  • Five men climb inside and on top of a cubic structure. The structure has a small wooden deck underneath lightweight steel webbing and is situated in a scrapyard surrounded by rubble.

    Workers assembling the Agbogbloshie Makerspace Platform (AMP) Spacecraft, a modular makerspace by DK Osseo-Asare, 2024 USA Fellow in Architecture & Design.

    Photo by Ashesi Design Lab / D:Lab / AMP.

  • Musicians perform in a space in front of a video installation. Both of the two screens behind the musicians project the same image, a Black woman placing a hand over her mouth.

    Samora Pinderhughes, 2024 USA Fellow in Music, performing live at The Kitchen. Performance directed by Samora Pinderhughes, Amanda Krische, and Christian Padron.

    Photo by Walter Wlodarczyk.

  • An overhead photo of Beth, smiling widely, candidly posing with a crowd of community members on a Miami concrete street.

    Beth Boone, 2024 Berresford Prize awardee, and Miami Light Project community members in front of The Light Box performance space.

    Photo courtesy of Beth Boone.

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Initiatives Awards

Through our Initiatives partnerships, we launched Seed and Bloom: Detroit and named the first cohort of ten fellows. Funded through the Gilbert Family Foundation and Kresge Foundation, the program supports Detroit-based, BIPOC artists growing their artistic practices into sustainable organizations and businesses that increase access to arts and culture programming. We awarded five artists through the Maxwell/Hanrahan Awards in Craft, an award recognizing artists and craftspeople committed to material mastery and exploration. The Rainin Arts Fellowship awarded four Bay Area artists and collectives working in dance, film, theater, and public space who are anchors in their communities, and through the Disability Futures Fellowship, a partnership with Ford and Mellon foundations, we awarded twenty disabled practitioners.

“There’s more parts to being an artist that are very human — like housing, healthcare, childcare for example — that contribute to the work we do. It’s validating to get this sense of self-determination.”
Rachel Lastimosa of TNT Traysikel, 2024 Rainin Arts Fellow. KQED.
  • A woman wearing a blue cap, white t-shirt, white pants, and white sneakers, with blonde hair that falls past her shoulders, is holding a microphone and standing in a crouched position, pointing toward an audience of people who are standing in a crowd in front of a brick wall. She is singing in front of a Philippine traysikel (motorized-covered sidecar).

    TNT SideCaraoke Activation by 2024 Rainin Arts Fellow TNT Traysikel, 2021. Performance at SFMOMA.

    Photo by Beth LaBerge.

  • Raul, a man with light skin, green eyes, and short, black hair combed to the side, leans against a black bookshelf and gazes into the camera. Behind him is a pegboard hung with an array of tools.

    Raul De Lara, a 2024 recipient of the Maxwell/Hanrahan Award in Craft, posing in his woodworking studio.

    Photo by Agaton Strom.

  • Eight people pose smiling for the camera.

    The 2024 Seed and Bloom: Detroit Fellows convening in Detroit in February 2024. Pictured clockwise from left: Amelia Duran, Danielle Eliska, Michael Manson, Ryan Myers-Johnson, Juanita Anderson, Tiff Massey, Jes Allie, and Yvette Rock. Not pictured: Halima Afi Cassells and Asia Hamilton.

    Photo by Cartiear Madlock, courtesy of the Gilbert Family Foundation.

  • Kay, a brown, round queer, performs at a microphone with transgender and rainbow flags in the background. They wear a gray blazer and glasses.

    Kay Ulanday Barrett, 2024 Disability Futures Fellow, performing for an audience.

    Photo courtesy of the artist.

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Events and Publishing

We expanded our editorial efforts, introducing a section on the website dedicated to news articles, artist features, and where you can continue to find the latest issues of New Suns and Shift Space. We’ve connected with communities in cities across the country through small convenings, conversations, and other events. We were thrilled to be the nonprofit partner for the 2024 Design Within Reach Annual Champagne Chair Contest hosted by MillerKnoll. We hosted a conversation at EXPO CHICAGO between Linda Nguyen Lopez and John Paul Morabito, 2024 USA Fellows in Craft.

“You’re connected to the materials and history when you’re working with your hands — not necessarily the final outcome — but you’re connected to a lineage of people who have been engaged in a process, who have been engaged in this labor.”
Tanya Crane, “Crafting Lineages.” From New Suns, Issue 10: Gathering Movements.
  • Judilee Reed speaks into a microphone. Seated next to her on the stage, John Paul Morabito and Linda Nguyen Lopez smile warmly.

    Linda Nguyen Lopez and John Paul Morabito, 2024 USA Fellows in Craft, in conversation with USA President & CEO Judilee Reed at as part of Dialogues at EXPO CHICAGO.

    Photo by Justin Barbin.

  • A five-panel black-and-white comic strip depicting Pegman, the avatar from Google Maps, dangling from one arm as it is lifted into the air and then dropped onto a grid-like landscape.

    Excerpt from Where They Can't See Us, a comic by Golrokh Nafisi. Commissioned by United States Artists for Shift Space.

    Artwork © 2024 Golrokh Nafisi.

  • Alx Velozo

    Level by Alx Velozo, 2024. Performance, 14 minutes 43 seconds. Commissioned by United States Artists for New Suns Issue 10: Gathering Movements.

    Artwork © 2024 Alx Velozo.

  • Miniature chairs constructed from champagne corks arranged on a table.

    Miniature Chairs from the Design Within Reach’s 20th annual Champagne Chair Contest competition.

    Photo by Hannah Turner. © BFA 2024.

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Once again, thanks for all of your support this year. We look forward to another year of working together to improve the lives of artists around the country.

— The USA Team

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