Vilcek Foundation Awards a Record $950K to Immigrant Artists and Leaders

Guadalupe Maravilla b. 1976, El Salvador Follow +

U.S.-based non-profit Vilcek Foundation has doubled its awards by adding two categories this year: Visual Arts and Curatorial Work. Celebrating its 25th year, it will grant 950,000 USD across 14 prizes, including 250,000 USD for art and curation, respectively.

Among the honours, El Salvador-born artist Guadalupe Maravilla received the Vilcek Prize in Visual Arts, accompanied by a 100,000 USD cash prize.

In 2022, Maravilla spoke to Ocula about his artistic focus on healing, shaped by his experiences as a child refugee from El Salvador’s civil war and as a survivor of cancer. ‘I learnt all these different ways of healing and confronting deep trauma, and this is what I’m teaching now, which is based on my lived experience,’ Maravilla said.

In a parallel accolade, Oluremi C. Onabanjo, who is known for her critical exploration of Blackness in photography, was presented the Vilcek Prize in Curatorial Work. The Museum of Modern Art curator is currently preparing a landmark exhibition at her home institution, titled Ideas of Africa: Portraiture and Political Imagination (14 December 2025–4 April 2026).

First introduced in 2024, the Marica Vilcek Prize in Art History was awarded to Francesca Du Brock, chief curator at the Anchorage Museum in Alaska, for her innovative approach to curating and public engagement with art.

Further prizes recognising creative promise in Visual Arts—each worth 50,000 USD—were conferred to Selva Aparicio, Felipe Baeza, and Jeffrey Meris.

Creative promise prizes for curatorial work were also awarded to Donna Honarpisheh, associate curator at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami; Aimé Iglesias Lukin, director and chief curator of art at the Americas Society; and Bernardo Mosqueira, who founded the experimental arts non-profit Solar dos Abacaxis in Rio de Janeiro and is chief curator at the Institute for Studies on Latin American Art in New York.

Through their foundation, founders Jan and Marica Vilcek, who immigrated to the U.S. from former Czechoslovakia in the 1960s, have awarded prizes in biomedical science and the arts since 2006. —[O]

Main image: Guadalupe Maravilla pictured at his residency at RAIR, Philadelphia. Courtesy Vilcek Foundation.