McKnight Visual Artist Fellowships The Minneapolis College of Art and Design is the administrative home of the McKnight Visual Artist Fellowships for mid-career artists.The 2026 McKnight Visual Artist Fellows have been announced. The 2027 McKnight Visual Artist Fellowship application cycle will open late-January 2027. Image About the McKnight Visual Artist FellowshipsSince 1982 the McKnight Fellowships for Visual Artists has rewarded talented Minnesota visual artists whose work is of exceptional artistic merit and who are at a career stage beyond emerging.Each year six $25,000 fellowships in the visual arts category are awarded. The focus of the fellowship program is to connect fellows to local and national art professionals and support additional professional development activities. In addition, the fellows have the opportunity to have their artwork professionally documented, access a range of MCAD facilities, and enjoy discounted MCAD Continuing Education classes. All McKnight Artist Fellows are eligible to receive eight hours of consultation support from Springboard for the Arts and participate in a one-two week residency facilitated by the Alliance of Artist Communities.Contact Program Director Keisha Williams or Associate Fellowship Coordinator Melanie Pankau at gallery@mcad.edu or 612.874.3803 for more information.About the McKnight Artist Fellowships ProgramFounded on the belief that Minnesota thrives when its artists thrive, the McKnight Foundation’s arts program is one of the oldest and largest of its kind in the country. Support for individual working Minnesota artists has been a cornerstone of the program since it began in 1982. The McKnight Artist Fellowships Program provides annual, unrestricted cash awards to outstanding mid-career Minnesota artists in fourteen different creative disciplines. Program partner organizations administer the fellowships and structure them to respond to the unique challenges of different disciplines. Currently the foundation contributes about $2.8 million per year to its statewide fellowships. For more information, visit McKnight Artist Fellowships.About the McKnight FoundationThe McKnight Foundation is a Minnesota-based family foundation that advances a more just, creative, and abundant future where people and the planet thrive. Established in 1953, the McKnight Foundation is deeply committed to advancing climate solutions in the Midwest; building an equitable and inclusive Minnesota; and supporting the arts in Minnesota, neuroscience, and international crop research. Meet the 2026 FellowsOn behalf of the McKnight Foundation, Minneapolis College of Art and Design (MCAD) announces the six recipients of the 2026 McKnight Fellowships for Visual Artists: Torey Erin, Isa Gagarin, Jay Heikes, Prima Jalichandra-Sakuntabhai, Jovan C. Speller, and Erinn Springer. Designed to support mid-career Minnesota artists, the McKnight Fellowships for Visual Artists provide each recipient with a $25,000 stipend, public recognition, professional encouragement from national critics, and a residency facilitated by the Artist Communities Alliance. The fellowships are funded by a grant from the McKnight Foundation and administered by MCAD.The 2026 McKnight fellows were selected from a group of 164 applicants by a national panel of arts professionals. Jurors were Laura Mott, Chief Curator of Cranbrook Art Museum, Bloomfield Hills, MI; Michael Rooks, Wieland Family Senior Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA; and Edra Soto, Chicago-based artist, educator, and co-director of outdoor project space The Franklin, Chicago, IL.Edra Soto reflected on the jurying process: “Serving as a juror for the McKnight Artist and Culture Bearers Fellowship was a true privilege. As an artist, I find evaluating artistic practices challenging, yet I recognize the importance of each individual's life and unique contributions. I believe it is my duty to provide objective perspectives and to support artists who risk so much to create, express themselves, and advocate for others through their personal lenses.” Starfield Torey ErinTorey Erin is a Minneapolis based interdisciplinary artist primarily working in moving image, sculpture, installation, ecology, and land art. Erin received her Bachelor of Fine Art and Master of Landscape Architecture from the University of Minnesota. Erin’s work amplifies environmental phenomena to create places where people may share their stories and co-create new art works. Her most recent project as inaugural Prairie Artist in Residence at Franconia Sculpture Park titled Starfield: Seed Choreography engaged in a multi-year ecological research project and ultimate transformation of a 1 acre of turf grass into a large scale land artwork and native prairie. Throughout the project, she utilized compost as material to generate a 60’ wide hugelkultur land form and invited the public to participate in a public ritual to seed the prairie. In 2022, Erin created a living participatory land artwork for the 4Ground Land Art Biennial titled Love Letters to the Earth, where she invited the community to discuss ecological grief and write devotions to earth on handmade seed paper to plant into a perennial garden. She proposes ways of re-imagining material approaches to art and landscape that serve human and non-human life, focusing on environmental change, empathy and relationality. Erin is a Senior Research Fellow at the Minnesota Design Center and adjunct professor of Landscape Architecture in the College of Design. Her design work supports marginalized communities with long term systems design strategies for ecological resilience and development. She is co-producer of DEMO, a community-skillshare workshop series in Minneapolis. toreyerin.com Tataotao i Tano’ (Body of the Land) Isa GagarinIsa Gagarin is a visual artist based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. She works in painting and drawing, often venturing in other disciplines including site-specific installation, video and performance. Gagarin’s work illuminates her experience of navigating a diasporic relationship to her birth island, Guam, where her family history is rooted. Dynamic elements of the ocean and sky, such as tides and lunar cycles, are present in Gagarin’s textured paintings. Juxtaposed with specific sites, events and personal narratives, her work conveys a nuanced sense of loss and belonging. After she began studying Chamoru, her maternal heritage language which is indigenous to Guam and the Mariana islands, Gagarin began incorporating language into her work through poetry, storytelling and song. Throughout her career, Gagarin has participated in the lively community of artist-run spaces in Minneapolis. Her work has been presented throughout the US including Pilele Projects (Los Angeles, CA), Midway Contemporary Art (Minneapolis, MN), the Minnesota Museum of American Art (St. Paul, MN), Rochester Art Center (Rochester, MN), the Contemporary Arts Center (Cincinnati, OH), the Kemper Museum of Art (Kansas City, MO), and Page Bond Gallery (Richmond, VA). Gagarin received her MFA in Painting from Virginia Commonwealth University and earned a BFA in Painting from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. She is a Lecturer in the Art Department at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. isagagarin.com Artist Recording in Studio Jay HeikesJay Heikes’ materially innovative and richly conceptual practice, continuously re-imagines an atlas of signs and symbols and stories, largely of his own devising. Drawing on art’s divergent histories—from the material and alchemical preoccupations of Arte Povera to the revolutionary critique of Russian Constructivism to the Romantic fascination with the sublime—Heikes examines themes of evolution and regeneration, stasis and corrosion, entropy and transformation. Acknowledging that there are no truly new ideas to be had, Heikes turns to what has already been; his practice is in a continual state of borrowing, transposing, appropriating, and reinterpreting old ideas and forms and narratives using a kaleidoscopic array of media, remaining perpetually open to transformation within his work and within himself. A commissioned, site-specific installation of Heikes's work will open June 2026 at the Obama Presidential Center, Chicago, IL. His work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at the Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha, NE; the Berkeley Art Museum & Pacific Film Archive, CA; the Aspen Art Museum, CO; and the Institute of Contemporary Art Philadelphia, as well as group exhibitions at the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL; MoMA PS1, Long Island City, NY; the Bronx Museum of the Arts, NY; and the New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York, NY. He was also featured in the 2006 Whitney Biennial, curated by Chrissie Iles and Philippe Vergne, at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York NY. Heikes earned an MFA from Yale University and a BFA from the University of Michigan. The artist lives in St. Paul and works in Minneapolis, MN. marianneboeskygallery.com Hieroglyphics (detail) Prima Jalichandra-SakuntabhaiPrima Jalichandra-Sakuntabhai is a transdisciplinary artist, curator, and art worker based in St Paul, Minnesota. They received a visual arts degree from the Ecole des Beaux Arts de Nantes Metropole and a license in Film Studies at the Sorbonne Nouvelle-Paris 3. They hold a BFA from the School of the Arts Institute of Chicago and a MFA from the California College of the Arts, San Francisco. They have widely exhibited nationally and internationally, at the Rochester Art Center, MN; ONE Archives at USC Libraries, Los Angeles, CA; UTS Gallery, Sydney, Australia; Museum of Contemporary Art, Bordeaux, France, esea contemporary, Manchester, UK, among others. They held live and online performative lectures at Human Resources, Los Angeles, CA; Marathon Screenings, Los Angeles, CA; Summer University, Performing Arts Forum, Saint Erme-Outre-et-Ramecourt, France; BOOKSHOP LIBRARY, BANGKOK CITYCITY GALLERY, among others. Their works have appeared in publications, such as Hyperallergic, Carla, Artillery Magazine, The Performance Art Journal, and Thai online media, the101.world and BOOKMARK MAGAZINE. They received the SOMA Summer Award to attend the SOMA Residency in Mexico City (2016), the California Arts Council Individual Artist Fellowship (2023), and Second Shift Studios Fellowship (2025–26). primasakuntabhai.com In Lotties LivingRoom Jovan C. SpellerJovan C. Speller is a lens-based interdisciplinary artist originally from Los Angeles, now living in rural Minnesota. Working across photography, installation, sound, text, and mixed media, her practice is rooted in explorations of memory and myth-making, the history of the human condition over time, and its impact on and relationship to the land. Through this work, she seeks to illuminate the beauty of deterioration, transformation, and forgetting. Speller holds a BFA in Fine Art Photography from Columbia College Chicago. Her work has been exhibited across the country and is held in the collections of the Minneapolis Institute of Art, the Minnesota Museum of American Art, the Museum of Contemporary Photography, and private collectors. She is a recipient of the Carolyn Glasoe Bailey Foundation Minnesota Art Prize, the McKnight Visual Artist Fellowship, Jerome Emerging Artist Fellowship, and several Minnesota State Arts Board grants. Beyond her studio practice, Speller is a permaculturist and homesteader committed to cultivating self-sustaining ecosystems and resilient rural living. She resides with her family in Minnesota, where she raises children, chickens, and plants. jovanspeller.com The Hayloft Erinn SpringerErinn Springer is a photographic artist exploring rituals of labor and the enduring imagination of daily life. Her images reflect moments of fantasy and introspection within otherwise literal, grounded spaces to illuminate how private lives intersect with larger historical and ecological forces. Central to her practice is the curiosity of how physical work—informed by gender, class, and geography—inscribes itself onto the body and psyche, becoming a primary language through which identity and belonging are understood. Her work considers how dreams, desires, and ways of living are carried across generations, reckoning with impermanence and how we make meaning within the worlds we inherit and create. Her work has been exhibited at institutions such as The National Portrait Gallery, Museum of Wisconsin Art, and The Smithsonian. She has been featured in and commissioned by publications like The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The New Yorker, and Vogue, among others and she has lectured at universities including Brown University, University of California Los Angeles, and Minneapolis College of Art and Design. Her debut monograph, Dormant Season, was published in 2023 by Charcoal Press. She is currently living and working in Duluth, MN. erinnspringer.com Additional McKnight Visual Artist Fellowship InformationFellowships Community Values Statement2026 McKnight Application GuidelinesPast Recipients Gallery Visitor PolicyThe MCAD Gallery is open to the public the following hours:Monday–Friday: 9:00 a.m–7:00 p.m.Saturday: 10:00 a.m.–4:00 p.m.All visitors must enter through the north (main) entrance, sign in at the welcome desk in the main lobby, and stay in designated gallery areas.Accessibility InformationThe gallery has limited padded and non-padded seating. Some artworks contain light, projections, sound, screens, and scent. The Main Gallery is on the first floor of the building, at the main entrance off Stevens Avenue and 25th Street. The Concourse Gallery is on the second floor and can be accessed via elevator or stairs. The building is equipped with wheelchair-accessible and gender-neutral bathrooms and accessible entrances from the main and parking lot entrances. MCAD is committed to providing students, faculty, staff, and visitors with disabilities equitable access to MCAD-sponsored programs and events. For more information or any disability accommodations, please contact MCAD Gallery staff at 612.874.3667 or gallery@mcad.edu.Transportation and ParkingThere is disability-accessible parking at two locations: the main entrance off Stevens Avenue and 25th Street and the MCAD parking lot off 26th Street and Second Avenue South. General event parking can be found in the MCAD parking lot off 26th Street and Second Avenue South, street parking along Stevens Avenue, or the Mia parking ramp.For more information on how to find us and where to park.