Here Are New York's MacArthur Genius Grant 2018 Winners

NEW YORK CITY — It doesn't take a genius to figure out that New Yorkers are smart, just a foundation.

Six New Yorkers are among the 25 artists, scientists, musicians and writers who won "genius" grants through the MacArthur Foundation's MacArthur Fellows Program.

The group includes an artist/curator, a computer scientist, a human rights lawyer artist, a playwright and an immunologist. Each one gets $625,000 with "no strings attached" to pursue any project they want, the foundation says.

Here are New York City's winners and what they did to earn the prestigious honor.

Matthew Aucoin, Composer

From The MacArthur Foundation: Matthew Aucoin is a composer expanding the potential of vocal and orchestral music to convey emotional, dramatic, and literary meaning. A talented pianist, writer, and conductor in addition to a composer, Aucoin melds sound and language to create musical works that vividly communicate the nuances, ambiguities, and multiple meanings of texts in musical form. [Read more.]

Julie Ault, Artist And Curator

From the MacAruthur Foundation: Julie Ault is an artist and curator activating and preserving art’s capacity to effect social change. In artmaking that takes the form of exhibition making, art criticism and theory, and historical chronicles, Ault explores how art shapes and is shaped by the political, social, economic, and aesthetic circumstances of a given moment. [Read more.]

Deborah Estrin, Computer Scientist

From the MacArthur Foundation: Deborah Estrin is a computer scientist creating open-source applications and platforms that leverage mobile computing devices and network services to address socio-technological challenges. Throughout her career, Estrin has demonstrated a remarkable ability to anticipate the applicability of technological advances to a variety of fields. She made fundamental contributions to improving the scalability and broader utility of the emerging internet through her work on network routing (the process that determines how data are forwarded from source to destination). [Read more.]

Becca Heller, Human Rights Lawyer

From the MacArthur Foundation: Becca Heller is a human rights lawyer mobilizing the resources of law schools and law firms to defend the rights of refugees and improve protection outcomes for many of the world’s most at-risk populations. She is the director and co-founder of the International (originally Iraqi) Refugee Assistance Project (IRAP), which provides legal services to individual refugees as they navigate labyrinthine application, appeal, and resettlement processes under U.S. and international law. [Read more.]

Dominique Morisseau, Playwright

From the MacArthur Foundation: Dominique Morisseau is a playwright whose works portray the lives of individuals and communities grappling with economic and social changes, both current and historical. With a background as an actor and spoken-word poet, she uses lyrical dialogue to construct emotionally complex characters who exhibit humor, vulnerability, and fortitude as they cope with sometimes desperate circumstances. [Read more.]

Okwui Okpokwasili, Choreographer And Performer

From the MacArthur Foundation: Okwui Okpokwasili is a performer, choreographer, and writer creating multidisciplinary performance pieces that draw viewers into the interior lives of women of color, particularly those of African and African American women, whose stories have long been overlooked and rendered invisible. The child of immigrants from Nigeria, Okpokwasili was born and raised in the Bronx, and the histories of these places and the girls and women who inhabit them feature prominently in much of her work. Her productions are highly experimental in form, bringing together elements of dance, theater, and the visual arts (with spare and distinctive sets designed by her husband and collaborator, Peter Born). [Read more.]

Wu Tsang, Filmmaker And Performance Artist

From the MacArthur Foundation: Wu Tsang is a filmmaker and performance artist who combines documentary and narrative techniques with fantastical detours into the imaginary in works that explore hidden histories, marginalized narratives, and the act of performing itself. Tsang re-imagines racialized, gendered representations beyond the visible frame to encompass the multiple and shifting perspectives through which we experience the social realm. [Read more.]

Photos courtesy of the MacArthurFoundation, used with permission