The American Academy in Rome is pleased to announce that composer Oswald Huỳnh, a 2026 Rome Prize Fellow in Musical Composition currently in residence, artist Sonya Clark, Affiliated Fellow in 2017, and poet Paula Bohince, Affiliated Fellow in 2022, have been named 2026 Guggenheim Fellows.
A Vietnamese American composer, Huỳnh’s work navigates Vietnamese aesthetics and traditions, language and translation, and the relationship between heritage and identity. Characterized by contrasts of timbre and interwoven textures, his practice has continued to evolve during his time at the Academy, where he has expanded his approach through material experimentation—including the development of hybrid instruments from reclaimed objects—and through a deeply collaborative, interdisciplinary process. During the fellowship, he is composing a new chamber work for Trio Sheliak, to be presented in Florence in May 2026, developed through ongoing workshops and exchange. He is also participating in study sessions in partnership with La Sapienza in Rome and creating the score for Carmen, a video and sound installation by 2026 Visiting Artist Ieva Lygnugarytė, curated by 2026 Visiting Scholar Meral Karacaoğlan, which will premiere in Venice on May 1 alongside the 61st International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia.
He will also present a live performance during Open Studios 2026 in collaboration with composer and 2026 Fellow Lembit Beecher on May 28.
Clark, who returned to the Academy as a Visiting Artist in 2019, is widely recognized for a materially driven practice that reexamines histories of race, identity, and labor through objects such as hair, textiles, beads, and found materials. Her work these days. this country. this history. (2019), presented at the Academy in spring 2022 as part of the exhibition Regeneration, exemplifies this approach: by unraveling commercially produced American and Confederate flags—symbols deeply tied to the history of the American Civil War—she transforms them through a slow and deliberate process of deconstruction. This act of unraveling becomes both a material and conceptual gesture, reflecting on the persistence of historical violence while suggesting the possibility of repair and reconfiguration.
Bohince is the author of four poetry collections, most recently A Violence (Princeton, 2025), following Swallows and Waves (2016), The Children (2012), and Incident at the Edge of Bayonet Woods (2008). Her poems have appeared in publications including The New Yorker, The London Review of Books, The New York Review of Books, and The TLS, among others. A recipient of numerous honors, including fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Amy Lowell Poetry Travelling Scholarship, she has held residencies at institutions such as MacDowell, the Dora Maar House, and the Amy Clampitt House, she came to the Academy as the Raiziss/De Palchi Traveling Fellow of the Academy of American Poets.
The recognition of Huỳnh, Clark, and Bohince with Guggenheim Fellowships highlights the breadth of artistic inquiry cultivated at the Academy, spanning experimental approaches to composition and sound, materially grounded practices that critically engage history, memory, and cultural meaning, and literary work of exceptional depth and resonance.