Harpo Foundation

05/13/2026

This month, we're happy to feature 2025 grantee Alba Triana's dynamic and multidisciplinary installations.

Triana's work explores the dynamic and interconnected essence of the universe, investigating how vibration, energy, and interaction shape our physical world and human experience. Through immersive environments and sculptures using various forms of vibration and energy—sound, light, electromagnetism—as primary materials, she aims to reveal the imperceptible processes that constitute and connect all forms—living and inert—within a unified, self-organizing universe. Rooted in her background as a composer, her practice approaches sensory experience as an indivisible manifestation of natural activity, dissolving traditional distinctions between disciplines. Guided by principles of chance, these systems, like living organisms, self-generate and evolve autonomously over time. Collaborating with scientists, engineers, and designers, she creates spaces for intellectual and emotional resonance, offering an experience of profound unity.

05/11/2026

We are so excited to be participating in the 2026 Vermont Creative Sector Convening on June 5 in St. Albans! This one day, in-person event brings together Vermont’s creative sector for learning and connecting through workshops, panels, performances, and networking. The theme for the 2026 Convening is “Hands-On” — a reflection of how creatives come together: through the things we make, the skills we share, and the hands we extend to help our community. The Convening is held in conjunction with the Downtown and Historic Preservation Conference on June 4. Funding for the Convening is provided in part by the New England Foundation for the Arts.

Tickets are available at a sliding scale — reserve yours today: bit.ly/VTCreativeConvening26



Image: Artwork titled "Collecting Light," made of tissue paper, acrylic ink, and graphite in shades of orange and blue, created by Vermont artist Neha Shukla.

The Vermont Arts Council
Vermont Creative Network

05/07/2026

We are so proud to be one of the newest members of the Historic Artists' Homes and Studios (HAHS), a program of the National Trust for Historic Preservation.

As a peer-to-peer coalition of museums, HAHS brings together sites that were the homes and working studios of significant American artists, leveraging collective experience in historic preservation, visitor programming, and community engagement.

The Harpo Foundation's Back River Road property -- which includes artist Ed Levine's longtime project "Vermont Village: A Conversation between Art, Water and the Land" and the Back River Road Residency Retreat -- is now part of this important group of sites capturing American creative life across two centuries, bringing the total to 93 HAHS member sites, spanning 32 states.

https://savingplaces.org/guides/hahs-2026-sites

04/29/2026

For April, we are proud to feature 2025 grantee, Steven Anthony Johnson, II's incredible work.

Johnson draws, documents, and archives intimate scenes and histories in an effort to reframe the way we talk about Blackness, Queerness, and the realities of Black Trans Parenthood. Their drawing and installation-based documentary practice traverses afro-diasporic narratives and dream stewardship of both genetic and chosen familial bonds impacted by socio-economic disenfranchisement, violence, and geographical displacement. This living archive tackles the Black Imagination, Queer/Trans dream cultivation, and Afro-Futurism but also focus’ on Johnson's own struggles of understanding Motherhood through a Transfemme experience.

04/22/2026

REMINDER: This Monday, April 27 is the deadline for both
Grants for Visual Artist and Impact Award applications!

04/18/2026

Always exciting to see past grantee’s work in-person. A big congratulations to , , and for your incredible work in the Whitney Biennial!

03/18/2026

This month, we're pleased to feature the work of 2025 grantee, Manuel Alejandro Rodríguez-Delgado.

RodrÍguez-Delgado's practice envisions a speculative future shaped by environmental collapse and post-capitalist survival—a world where we repurpose the remnants of industrial society to construct improvised utopias. Informed by his identity as a native of the world’s oldest colony, Puerto Rico, and by an early fascination with technological objects, he creates large-scale sculptures using what he has termed Technological Surplus—the discarded byproducts of late-stage capitalism and its production models. These works operate on two levels: as fictional prototypes for sustainable futures and as real explorations of the potential of technology beyond profit-driven systems.

03/12/2026

The Harpo Foundation is now accepting applications for the 2026 Impact Award for Native American Art fellowship, an annual $25,000 award that aims to amplify the contributions of under-recognized Native American contemporary visual artists.

Applications are open to artists who are enrolled members or citizens of a state or federally recognized American Indian tribe, an Alaska Native corporation, or individuals of Native Hawaiian ancestry.

Visit the Impact Award page on our website for details on how to apply.

Application deadline: April 27, 2026.

02/26/2026

Our 2026 application portal is now open for both our Grants for Visual Artists and Impact Award for Native American Art programs! !

Application deadline is April 27.

The Grants for Visual Artists award provides direct support to under-recognized artists 21 years or older.

02/12/2026

Congratulations to February's featured artist, 2025 grantee Anne Buckwalter, on her upcoming solo exhibition "The Kiss" at Haverkampf Fleistenschneider in Berlin. Show opens tomorrow! (images of prior work and not representative of upcoming exhibition)

Buckwalter's creative practice explores the intersection of sexuality and domestic life. Inspired by the folk art traditions of her Pennsylvania Dutch heritage, her paintings arrange disparate objects in interior spaces, integrating the erotic with the mundane. By imagining obscure narratives that embrace paradoxes, Buckwalter's work delves into questions about the body, femininity, and desire. These deeply personal subjects are interesting to her both in how they relate to her own lived experiences as well as how they are contextualized within a larger socio-cultural dialogue. She sees her work as self-portraiture—her paintings reference her memories and fantasies—but she also considers how her work contributes to a broader conversation around normalizing female sexuality, celebrating sexual diversity, and eradicating erotic shame.

01/29/2026

We are delighted to welcome Lisa Stone as the newest member of our Board of Trustees. Lisa is an independent curator and preservation consultant based in rural Wisconsin whose work focuses on the preservation and interpretation of artist-built environments. She retired in 2020 from her roles as curator of the Roger Brown Study Collection and Senior Lecturer in the Department of Art History, Theory, and Criticism, both at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC). Her research, teaching, writing, and curating concern artists who work independently from the academic mainstream. Stone focuses on work that’s often home/garden-based and ignores or dissolves boundaries between home and studio, life and art. With Don Howlett she has written and implemented preservation plans for artist-built environments and sculptures since 1986. Stone has a Master of Science in Historic Preservation from SAIC. We look forward to incorporating Lisa's insights and leadership into our ongoing efforts to preserve the legacy of artist and educator Ed Levine.