The Ruth Foundation for the Arts (Ruth Arts) is pleased to announce the 2026 recipients of their Ruth Awards, the third edition of the foundation’s annual prize awarding contemporary artists working across North America with a no-strings-attached $100,000 prize.
The award honors the Foundation’s benefactor, Ruth DeYoung Kohler II, who was a lifelong champion of critically engaged artists and creative experimentation. Throughout her career, Kohler supported, advocated for, and collaborated with hundreds of artists on various programs and initiatives. The Ruth Award continues this legacy, recognizing artists that are accelerating the field forward, building deeper relationships and connections across communities, and developing artistic approaches to structural change.
This year’s awards acknowledge five extraordinary artists who are embracing materiality, movement, and explorations of time in groundbreaking ways. It is with great excitement that the Foundation awards this year’s prizes to Yuji Agematsu, Ranu Mukherjee, Will Rawls, Ellen Sebastian Chang, and Anna Martine Whitehead.
The program echoes the ethos of Ruth Arts’ flagship grant program, Artist Choice, in which artists recommend organizations that have deeply impacted their own creative practices and communities to receive unrestricted grants and become part of the Ruth Arts granting pool. Similarly, the Ruth Awards program takes a relational approach in honoring artists with awardees nominated by a rotating list of peers from across North America.
“Each year, we receive a multitude of nominations that guide us towards the most inspiring and thought provoking artists and practices today,” says Program Director Kim Nguyen. “Our world is better and more complex with artists in it, and this award acknowledges the necessity of supporting rigorous creative practice, critical thinking, and the freedom of artistic expression. It is an honour to reward this year’s artists for being responsive and empathetic, for their dedication to emergent strategies, for their constant pursuit of the big idea. We hope that this recognition carries them onwards into the future—we need them more than ever.”
