The Doris Duke Foundation (DDF) has announced the six recipients of the 2026 Doris Duke Artist Awards, who will each receive a cash prize of $525,000 in unrestricted funds – the largest cash prize in the United States dedicated to individual performing artists.
Funds are allocated over seven years and include a $25,000 incentive for those who choose to allocate funds for retirement. The foundation explains that the unrestricted nature of the award allows artists to use the funds for personal needs, accessing the benefits of a social safety net that is not accessible to individual artists in the U.S.
“When we provide artists with access to unrestricted financial resources, we break down the barriers that hold the artist community back from being truly free to create, experiment, and move society forward,” Ashley Ferro-Murray, PhD, program director for the arts at DDF, said in a statement. “The Doris Duke Artist Awards program is more than an award — it is the realization of our commitment to the essential investments our society must make in sustaining, cultivating and celebrating creative labor as a necessary pillar of our communities and country.”
In addition to the cash prize, the foundation provides winners professional development support, financial planning and management services and enhanced networking and performance opportunities.
The Doris Duke Artist Awards were established in 2012. This year’s honorees – five women and one man – are:
- Aleshea Harris: A playwright, screenwriter and director driven by a desire to see Black women represented beyond convention, she has dedicated her practice to uplifting Black narratives through theater.
- Val Jeanty (Val-Inc): A Haitian composer, percussionist, turntablist, and Berklee professor whose work has been presented at institutions including the Biennale, the Whitney and MoMA. She pioneered Afro-Electronica, sharing her Haitian culture with the world.
- Makaya McCraven: A Chicago-based drummer and producer recognized as a leading voice in contemporary jazz. He is acclaimed for transforming live improvisations into edited soundscapes that push the boundaries of the genre.
- Allison Orr: A Texas-based choreographer and founder of Forklift Danceworks who transforms everyday labor into “ethnographic choreography.” Drawing on her background in anthropology and social work, she creates large-scale dances featuring community members and workers.
- Tomeka Reid: An American cellist, composer, improviser, and bandleader, who has redefined the role of the cello in contemporary jazz. Her artistry bridges classical traditions and avant-garde improvisation, establishing the instrument as a vital force in boundary-pushing music.
- Yara Travieso: A Brooklyn-based anti-disciplinary artist working in performance and film. Travieso crafts absurd myths, spectacles, and ritual practices influenced by her Cuban-Venezuelan lineage.
As part of the foundation’s “Creative Labor, Creative Conditions” campaign, DDF is also awarding more than $1 million in grants (in total) to six organizations “working to build a more sustainable and equitable ecosystem for artists.” This year’s recipients are:
- Artist Corporations Foundation: To support the advocacy, policy development, and public education activities of the foundation as it establishes the Artist Corporation (A-Corp), a new business entity designed to empower and protect artists and their creative work.
- Artistic Freedom Initiative: To support the Artistic Freedom Monitor, a data platform tracking and documenting threats to artistic expression across the U.S., and the Artist Community Network, an artist-led space offering peer-to-peer mentorship, professional resources and event production opportunities for displaced and at-risk creatives.
- Pollinator: To support the development, programming and pedagogy of Pollinator’s artist-owned and secure communication platform for artists facing systemic barriers to access and resources.
- SOZO Impact: To support the development of its new Global Cultural Impact Hub: an integrated agency model that brings together artist incubation, production and an impact accelerator under one roof.
- Starfish Accelerator Foundation: To support the development of ROOT, an open-source infrastructure that improves creative conditions across performing and media arts by enabling artists to fund, distribute, and sustain their work through transparent revenue sharing, rights governance and reciprocal collaboration.
- Pangea World Theater: To support the development and execution of its Liberating Spaces initiative, a multiyear effort to build national artist coalitions through convenings, a cultural symposium and festival, and the opening of the Center for Peace and Justice, advancing equitable conditions for artists and strengthening creative labor networks.
“At the Doris Duke Foundation, we honor the dignity of artists as workers,” Sam Gill, CEO of the Doris Duke Foundation, said in a statement. “For too long, our society has treated the performing arts as a luxury rather than a labor force. With this new round of grants, the Doris Duke Foundation is doubling down on our commitment to systemic change.”
For more information about DDF’s grantmaking in the arts, visit the organization’s website.
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