Trevor Paglen Interrogates AI, Wins LG Guggenheim Prize
The New York-based artist and author Trevor Paglen was today announced as the recipient of the 2026 LG Guggenheim Award, for which he receives $100,000 in unrestricted funds.
Paglen is the fourth artist to receive the award, which is granted by the LG Guggenheim Art and Technology Initiative. The five-year collaboration between the Korean tech corporation and the US foundation was launched in 2022, with the aim of promoting and supporting artists working “at the intersection of art and technology”.
The winner was selected by an international jury comprising Mori Art Museum director Mami Kataoka, V&A digital art curator Melanie Lenz, writer and curator Rasha Salti, Guggenheim associate curator Noam Segal, and Bogotá Modern Art Museum’s artistic director Eugenio Viola.
“Paglen’s sustained commitment to addressing urgent global concerns—through rigorous artistic research, technological subversion, intellectual risk-taking, and engagement with universal subject matter—has resulted in a coherent and highly distinctive artistic oeuvre,” the jury said in a collective statement.
“His works consistently bring legibility and public access to opaque and often inaccessible technologies, while resisting dominant corporate narratives and foregrounding broader societal and ethical considerations. This unwavering devotion to critical inquiry and public accountability merits recognition and support.”
Paglen said he was “honoured” to receive the award.
“We’re living through a profound transformation in our relationship to images. Images, sensing systems, algorithms, and the infrastructures around them, have become active participants in the world—shaping decisions, identities, cultures and histories,” he said.
The Maryland-born artist works across photography, digital media, sculpture and writing, uncovering the machinations of artificial intelligence, images, systems and technology.
In recent years, Paglen has been the subject of solo shows at the Smithsonian Museum of American Art (2018) and the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego (2019).
On 18 May, Paglen will deliver a lecture-performance titled The Lizard People Are Here! at the Guggenheim New York. This summer, he will also be part of the inaugural exhobition at the newly opened FotoFocus in Cincinatti, Ohio.
His forthcoming book, How to See Like a Machine: Images After AI, will be published by Verso in May.
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