John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation

John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation is a nonprofit organization whose mission is to further the development of scholars and artists.

In his Annual Report for 1953-1954, Guggenheim Foundation President Henry Allen Moe wrote: “The cultural maverick, scien...
06/03/2026

In his Annual Report for 1953-1954, Guggenheim Foundation President Henry Allen Moe wrote:

“The cultural maverick, scientific and other, is an important person in any culture that is truly free. He includes the significant variants in a field of study, the persons who are interested in unfamiliar ideas, those who lack a definitive label, those whose interest and bent cannot be named by a word, those lonely seekers whose intellectual curiosity and creative imagination come to flower and fruition only when left alone. Not to foster them is a failure that, in the long run, spells national su***de almost by definition. For civilization does not advance by treading the familiar paths; and this Foundation would be doing much less than our duty as an institution devoted to the public good, if — by reason of their unorthodoxy and non-conformity — we were to miss any of the very rare persons who will find new paths and, treading them, will pioneer the future.”

Moe was the president of the Foundation from its beginning in 1925 to 1963, working diligently to carry out its mission in a rapidly changing world.

Composer and saxophonist Sonny Rollins received a Guggenheim Fellowship in Music Composition in 1972. Born in Harlem in ...
05/27/2026

Composer and saxophonist Sonny Rollins received a Guggenheim Fellowship in Music Composition in 1972.

Born in Harlem in 1930, Rollins began studying music as a child and was playing saxophone professionally by the time he was in his teens. He quickly became an essential figure in the New York jazz scene, working with musicians like Miles Davis and Thelonious Monk (1976 Fellow in Music Composition). Like many artists at the time, he struggled with he**in addiction in the early 1950s, but overcame it, releasing two albums in 1956—“Tenor Madness” and “Saxophone Colossus”—that became instant classics. Over the next ten years, he took few breaks, consistently putting out new music, collaborating with other artists and musicians, and taking on big projects like scoring the movie “Alfie.”

But between 1966 and 1972, Rollins stopped recording and performing, spending his time in India and Japan in what he called “a spiritual quest.” When he applied for a Guggenheim Fellowship, he wanted to use his time to recommit himself to his composition practice. He used some of the grant money to rent a studio space and outfit it with recording equipment, giving himself a dedicated place to work and experiment. In 1972, he came out with his first album in six years called “Next Album.”

Through the rest of his career, Rollins released 17 more albums (not including his numerous live albums), collaborated with bands like The Rolling Stones and institutions like , and received many honors for his work, including being awarded a Award for Lifetime Achievement in 2004 and the National Medal of Arts in 2010, and being elected to the in 2010 and being a Kennedy Center Honoree in 2011. He announced his retirement due to health issues in 2014. “When I had to stop playing, it was quite traumatic,” he told in 2020, “But I realized that instead of lamenting and crying, I should be grateful for the fact that I was able to do music all of my life.”

Rollins died earlier this week at the age of 95.

Photo 1 by Chuck Fishman, 1977. Photo 2 by John Abbott, 1995.

What a pleasure it was to continue our Centennial celebrations in Boston this week! On May 12th, we gathered with New En...
05/14/2026

What a pleasure it was to continue our Centennial celebrations in Boston this week! On May 12th, we gathered with New England-area Fellows at the beautiful Boston Public Library to raise a glass to the Foundation’s first 100 years.

We enjoyed a speech from our president, Edward Hirsch (1985 Fellow in Poetry); musical performances by tabla player and composer Sandeep Das (2019 Fellow in Music Composition) and saxophonist and composer Miguel Zenón (2008 Fellow in Music Composition); as well as remarks by acclaimed sociologist and Committee of Selection member Mary C. Waters (1993 Fellow in Sociology) and statistician, computational neuroscientist, anesthesiologist, and Guggenheim Foundation Trustee Emery N. Brown (2015 Fellow in Applied Mathematics).

Thank you for helping us keep the party going!

(📸 )

Congratulations to our 2026 Pulitzer Prize () winners and finalists! Winners: M. Gessen (2017 Fellow in General Nonficti...
05/05/2026

Congratulations to our 2026 Pulitzer Prize () winners and finalists!

Winners:
M. Gessen (2017 Fellow in General Nonfiction): Winner in Opinion Writing
Jill Lepore (2014 Fellow in U.S. History): Winner in History for “We the People: A History of the U.S. Constitution”
Amanda Vaill (2000 Fellow in Dance Studies): Winner in Biography for “Pride and Pleasure: The Schuyler Sisters in an Age of Revolution”
Yiyun Li (2020 Fellow in Fiction): Winner in Memoir or Biography for “Things in Nature Merely Grow”
Gabriela Lena Frank (2009 Fellow in Music Composition): Winner in Music for “Picaflor: A Future Myth”

Finalists:
Michael J. Lewis (2008 Fellow in Architecture, Planning, and Design): Finalist in Criticism
Katie Kitamura (2025 Fellow in Fiction): Finalist in Fiction for “Audition”
Patricia Smith (2014 Fellow in Poetry): Finalist in Poetry for “The Intentions of Thunder: New and Selected Poems”
Andrew Rindfleisch (1995 Fellow in Music Composition): Finalist in Music for “American Descent”
Billy Childs (2009 Fellow in Music Composition): Finalist in Music for “In the Arms of the Beloved”

Larry Levis received a Guggenheim Fellowship in Poetry in 1982. When he applied for his Fellowship, Levis had already wr...
04/30/2026

Larry Levis received a Guggenheim Fellowship in Poetry in 1982.

When he applied for his Fellowship, Levis had already written three well-regarded books of poems, including “The Dollmaker’s Ghost,” which won the Open Competition of the National Poetry Series in 1981. During his Guggenheim Fellowship, he completed his fourth book, “Winter Stars.”

Re-released this year with an introduction from Paisley Rekdal (2014 Fellow in Poetry), “Winter Stars” was lauded for Levis’s unique ability “to combine so artfully the skills of the novelist and those of the poet. Levis’s gift in this, perhaps his finest work, reveals itself in that attention to detail that is the novelist’s creed, and the compulsion to say what must be said, even if one has stopped believing, that marks the poet’s calling” (Kliat Paperback Book Guide). Swipe to read “In the City of Light,” a poem from this collection.

Born in landlocked central California, Levis grew up working on his father’s vineyard. In college, he studied with poet Philip Levine (1973 and 1980 Fellow in Poetry), who remained influential throughout Levis’s life. After “Winter Stars,” Levis published only one more book of poetry, “The Widening Spell of the Leaves,” before he died in 1996 at the age of 49.

This year, “Swirl & Vortex,” Levis’s full collected works, was published. Read 2026 Fellow Elisa Gabbert’s () review of the book in at the link in our bio.

Photo: University of Pittsburgh Press

Joanne M. Simpson received her Guggenheim Fellowship in Earth Science in 1954 when she was 31 years old. Four years earl...
04/22/2026

Joanne M. Simpson received her Guggenheim Fellowship in Earth Science in 1954 when she was 31 years old. Four years earlier, at , she had become the first American woman to receive a doctorate in meteorology. Throughout her long career, her focus was on the myriad ways clouds impact the world’s climate.

Initially intrigued by clouds as a sailor and private pilot, Simpson developed the first scientific model of clouds as a research associate at .ocean. Part of this research required her to fly an old Navy airplane into the notably tall clouds near the equator. At the time, WHOI didn’t allow women to do field work, but the naval officer who arranged the expedition told the WHOI director, “No Joanne, no airplane.” She identified that tropical clouds weren’t the result of atmospheric circulation; rather, they caused it. She continued this research as a Guggenheim Fellow, during a year spent at in London, studying the structure and growth processes of cumulus clouds.

Alongside her mentor Dr. Herbert Riehl, Simpson developed the “hot tower” hypothesis in the late 1950s, which explained how trade winds keep blowing and how hurricanes are powered by the heat they retain. Over the course of her career, she worked as a professor at and and headed the Experimental Meteorology Laboratory at the National Weather Bureau (now ). In what she considered the highest accomplishment of her career, she worked at , where, starting in 1986, she led the study science team for the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission, the first space-based rain radar, which provided invaluable insight about how hurricanes begin and what impacts rainfall.

Simpson was the first female president of the American Meteorological Society and received its highest honor, the Carl-Gustav Rossby Research Medal, in 1983. In 2002, she was the first woman to receive the International Meteorological Organization Prize. She died in 2010 at the age of 86.

Photo 1: Joanne M. Simpson by Jan Hahn, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.
Photo 2 Joanne M. Simpson, courtesy of The Schlesinger Library, NASA Earth Observatory

Bravo to our 2026 Fellows in the Creative Arts!
04/14/2026

Bravo to our 2026 Fellows in the Creative Arts!

Hurrah to our 2026 Fellows in the Humanities!
04/14/2026

Hurrah to our 2026 Fellows in the Humanities!

A round of applause for our 2026 Fellows in Interdisciplinary Studies!
04/14/2026

A round of applause for our 2026 Fellows in Interdisciplinary Studies!

Three cheers for our 2026 Guggenheim Fellows in the Natural Sciences!
04/14/2026

Three cheers for our 2026 Guggenheim Fellows in the Natural Sciences!

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