THE GUGGENHEIM FELLOWSHIP AT 100 A New Special Exhibit Celebrating a Century of Cultural Impact

The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation – home to the Guggenheim Fellowships – celebrates a century of cultural impact with a special exhibit that chronicles the organization’s rich history and profound influence on American intellectual life and creative achievement. Titled The Guggenheim Fellowship at 100, this limited run presentation at The New York Historical is on view now, and explores the vast and rarely seen archives of the Foundation and spotlight some of the most notable Guggenheim Fellows over the last century. The exhibit is included in admission to The New York Historical, and will be displayed inside the main lobby as part of the Leah & Michael Weisberg Monumental Treasures Wall.

On view through November 30, 2025, The Guggenheim Fellowship at 100 presents seldom seen letters, photos, books, and applications from Guggenheim Fellows including writers, scholars, scientists, and artists such as Ansel Adams, Alvin Ailey, Hannah Arendt, James Baldwin, Rachel Carson, Aaron Copland, Robert Frank, Martha Graham, Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Barbara McClintock, Thelonius Monk, Linus Pauling, F. Sherwood Rowland, Oliver Sacks, and many more.

Over the last century, the Guggenheim Foundation has supported over 19,000 exceptional writers, scholars, scientists and artists, adding to the cultural, scholarly, and scientific power of our country. Guggenheim Fellows have created forward-thinking art, made world-changing discoveries, given voice to all manner of experience, and answered some of our society’s biggest questions.

Exhibition Highlights 

Among the more than 70 artifacts and reproductions on view, the exhibit will feature:

• Letters between Foundation leaders, such as president Henry Allen Moe, and several Fellows, including Rachel Carson, Aaron Copland, Isaac Fisher, Martha Graham, Zora Neale Hurston, F. Sherwood Rowland, Edward Weston, and more.
• Applications and related materials from figures such as Alvin Ailey, James Baldwin, John Cage, Maya Deren, Dorothea Lange, Jacob Lawrence, Barbara McClintock, Vladimir Nabokov, Thelonius Monk, Oliver Sacks, and more.

• Photographs by Ansel Adams, Robert Frank, Edward Weston, and more.

• Books by Younghill Kang, Dorothea Lange, Alan Lomax, Rachel Carson, Linus Pauling, Hannah Arendt, Ada Louise Huxtable, Zora Neale Hurston, Gwendolyn Brooks, Louise Erdrich, and more.