Featuring artists Tomashi Jackson, Lucy Kim, and Yu-Wen Wu

On view at Wagner Gallery August 19 – December 2, 2026

CAMBRIDGE, MA — August 19, 2026 | Wagner Foundation, a Cambridge, MA-based foundation committed to investing in health equity, economic wellbeing, and the transformative power of art and culture, is pleased to present an exhibition celebrating the 2026 Wagner Arts Fellows, Tomashi Jackson, Lucy Kim, and Yu-Wen Wu: three Greater Boston artists with rigorous, research-based practices that investigate the histories, systems, and conditions that shape contemporary life.

Together, Jackson, Kim, and Wu reflect the depth and ambition of artists who have built nationally and internationally recognized careers while choosing Greater Boston as their creative home and community. The exhibition is on view August 19 – December 2, 2026. Admission is free and open to the public by appointment.

A person wearing black gloves works with dried plants and art supplies on a wooden table. Text reads 2026 Wagner Arts Fellows Exhibition in the making..

“In my practice, materials are not just mediums but carriers of meaning. Appearing in the Wagner Gallery show, Recitations II is a work that speaks to meditation, prayer, and ritual through use of Taiwanese tea leaves – some gilded, some left bare – molded into orbs and bound by red cord, referencing Buddhist Mala beads. Acculturation VII uses tea, organic materials, and gold as metaphors for identities in global migration.”

Yu-Wen Wu, artist and 2026 Wagner Arts Fellow

 

The exhibition is organized by Abigail Satinsky, Senior Program Officer and Curator, Art & Culture, with Maggie Wong, Gallery Coordinator.

“Tomashi, Lucy, and Yu-Wen embody what we seek through the Wagner Arts Fellowship: artists whose rigorous practices deepen our capacity to see the systems that shape our lives and imagine differently. We’re honored to present their work and to continue supporting artists who advance the field while addressing urgent questions about who we are as a society,” said Abigail Satinsky, Senior Program Officer and Curator, Art & Culture, Wagner Foundation.

The Wagner Arts Fellowship, founded and supported by Wagner Foundation, supports mid-career to established Greater Boston visual artists with a $75,000 unrestricted grant and tailored artist services, in partnership with United States Artists. The Fellowship affirms the transformative power of artists as catalysts for social change and strengthens Greater Boston’s arts ecosystem.

About The Artists

Tomashi Jackson grounds her vibrant, layered works in archival research into public infrastructure policy, combining painting, printmaking, sculpture, video, photography, and fiber. Her practice traces the intersections of color theory and political histories of segregation, voting rights, education, labor, transportation, and housing in the US and beyond. Jackson’s work is held in the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Guggenheim Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, MOCA Los Angeles, and many others. She lives and works in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Lucy Kim builds her interdisciplinary practice on sustained scientific inquiry, working across painting, sculpture, and biological media, including ink derived from live bacteria and melanin developed during her residency at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. Embracing distortion as a research tool, her hybrid works interrogate how we see what we see, and the complicated relationship between truth and sight. A recipient of the 2024 Howard Foundation Fellowship and the 2022 Creative Capital Award, Kim is Associate Professor of Art at Boston University and is based in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Yu-Wen Wu draws on her experience of migration to investigate the intersections of art, science, the natural world, and social and cultural issues. Through large-scale drawings, site-specific video installations, community-engaged projects, and public art, she examines questions of global migration, displacement, and the nuances of identity and belonging. The 2024 Artist-in-Residence at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Wu has received major public commissions across Boston, including a permanent work at Boston City Hall. She lives and works in Boston, Massachusetts.