Anonymous Was A Woman Names 27 Environmental Grant Winners

(MENAFN- USA Art News) Anonymous Was a Woman (AWAW), in partnership with the New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA), has announced the recipients of its 2026 Environmental Art Grants program. A total of $488,180 will be distributed among 27 women-identifying artists from across the United States and its territories, with each project addressing ecological concerns receiving up to $20,000.

The current selection marks the largest pool of applicants to date, with 1,206 artists vying for the grants. Winning projects span diverse locations including California, Guatemala, Iowa, Nevada, New York, Panama, and Puerto Rico. Among the 2026 grantees are Fawn Douglas of Las Vegas, who aims to revive Southern Paiute language and culture through a flashcard deck, and Mary Mattingly, whose floating garden on the Erie Canal in New York State will offer free harvesting and ecological education. Vivian M. Cook will also bring plays about local environmental issues to Iowa communities through the EcoTheatre Lab.

Established in 1996, AWAW has historically supported women-identifying artists over the age of 40, disbursing more than $10 million in unrestricted grants to over 400 recipients. The Environmental Art Grants, launched in 2022, emerged from AWAW founder Susan Unterberg's collaboration with former grantee Jeanne Silverthorne on the 2021 climate change-focused artist book Disaster Diary. To date, this specific program has awarded over $1.9 million to 109 projects. Notable past recipients include Dara Birnbaum, Mika Rottenberg, Diana Thater, and Victoria-Idongesit Udondian, whose 2024 grant-winning project, which investigates the social and environmental impacts of the secondhand clothing trade in Ghana, is currently on view at the 2026 Venice Biennale.

A full list of this year's grantees and their projects includes:

Emma Akmakdjian, Kelp Kulture, and the Santa Rosa Island Research Station, The Marine Debris Waste Stream: Past and Present Fishing Practices of the Northern Channel Islands, a beach cleanup project (The Northern Channel Islands, CA) Reniqua Allen-Lamphere, Infertile Ground, a film (Jersey City, NJ) Rachel Austin and Kaityn Rutledge, Wiigwaasi-Jiimaan Gabeshiwim (Birch Bark Canoe camp), a community education project (Bemidji, Red Lake Nation, Leech Lake Nation, MN) Alex J. Bledsoe, OAKLEAD, a documentary film (Oakland, CA) Maria Jose Calderon and Sur Territoria, Defensor@s del Ngen Ko, (Defenders of the Spirit of Water), a community and intercultural education program (Curacautin, Wallmapu [Mapuche Territory], Chile) Tamara Cedré, No Puedo Ver El Fondo/I Can't See the Bottom, a photo archive (San Juan, Salinas, and Cabo Rojo, Puerto Rico) Vivian M. Cook and the EcoTheatre Lab, In Our Backyard: An Iowa Tour, original plays (Iowa) Fawn Douglas, Nuwu Um-buh-gah: Paiute Language Deck #2, artistic language revitalization (Las Vegas, Nuwu lands) Korina Emmerich, Material Lineages, textile transformation (New York) Tirtza Even, Disturbe, multichannel installations (New Mexico, Louisiana, Alaska, Maine, Wyoming, California, Hawaii) Amanda María Forastieri, Laboratorio Textil Comunitario (LATECO), a community-based textile arts center (Caguas, Puerto Rico) Schessa Garbutt, California Blues: Eco-Cultural Histories & Futures, a free public event series (Los Angeles) Tova Katzman, Mr. Brown's Garden, an audiovisual narrative project (Panama City, Panama) Tannis Kowalchuk, artistic director of Farm Arts Collective's Dream on the Farm, a site-specific eco-theater performance (Willow Wisp Organic Farm in Damascus, PA) Ifrah Mansour, living history inside the Aqal, nomadic dome (Minnesota) Mary Mattingly, Floating Garden, a floating food forest (Erie Canal Corridor, New York State, Medina, NY, to the Bronx, New York City) Grace McNally (director and producer), Listening to Whales, a film (United States, Nova Scotia, Argentina, and the world's oceans) MitiMeth x Sara Bologna, Ọ̀sà Eko Tuntun, a collection of light objects (New Lagos Lagoon, Ibadan, Oyo State, and Lagos, Nigeria) Catie Newell, TREE SPACE, a forest and nursery (Detroit) Ka Oskar Ly with Moving Mountains and RedGreen Rivers, Ancestral Futures: A Hmong Hemp Field Is a Movement, eco-queer-feminist self and land-relation reclamation (Dane County, WI, on Ho-Chunk [Hoocąk] ancestral land) Cinthya Santos Briones, Migrant Herbalism, a community project (New York) Shamira, We Wear the Sun: An Okra Material Ecology, a multimedia project (Indianapolis) Rachel Shuman (co-director) and David Sampliner (co-director), Snow Globe, a film (Beacon, NY) Ani Simon-Kennedy, The Forest School, a polyphonic documentary (Dja Faunal Reserve, Cameroon) Naomi Wanjiku Gakunga, From Repair to Resale in Nairobi, wall reliefs (Nairobi, Kenya) Maia Wikler (director) and Cecilia Brown and Audrey Popa (co-producers), Wild East, a documentary short (Romania, Sweden, Austria) Veronica Wood, Land of Four Suns, a feature documentary film (Chaquijya, Guatemala)

Source: Artforum

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