Photography and the Guggenheim Fellowship | Photo Assembly

Since their founding, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation has supported over 19,000 writers, scholars, scientists, and artists in over 50 different fields of study.

In the Fall 2025 Photo Assembly, leaders in the field to explore the influence of the Guggenheim Fellowship on the landscape of contemporary photography. Sarah Meister, Aperture’s executive director and editor of the forthcoming book Fellowship: The Guggenheim Foundation and the History of American Photography (Aperture, 2027), and Robert Slifkin, director of graduate studies at the Institute of Fine Arts and contributor to this title, lead a panel discussion. Art historians Phil Taylor, Emilie Boone, Sarah Kennel, and Leslie M. Wilson join the panel, along with a number of prolific artists and thinkers, to consider the impact of this Fellowship since its first grant was made to a photographer, Edward Weston, in 1937.

Aperture, the Institute of Fine Arts, and the Whitney Museum of American Art have joined together to establish a series of conversations that center photography as a creative act and means of responding to urgent questions in the world around us. This convening of photo-committed makers and thinkers fosters a critical yet community-oriented environment for reflection and learning.

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Image: Larry Sultan, My Mother Posing, from the series Pictures from Home, 1984. Courtesy the Estate of Larry Sultan