Folger Shakespeare Library announces Contemporary Art at the Folger, an exhibition featuring Folger Artist Fellows

Today, the Folger Shakespeare Library announced Contemporary Art at the Folger. ​Beginning in October 2025 and extending to April 2026, the Folger will host small solo exhibitions featuring the work of four recent Artist Fellows at the Folger Institute, the center for advanced research in the early modern humanities at the Folger. The four artists will give talks at the Folger during the run of their exhibition. Artist Fellow Alexander D’Agostino will also give a talk at the Folger on April 26, 2026 in support of his upcoming exhibition at Transformer DC next spring.

Each year, the Folger Shakespeare Library awards fellowships to artists whose creative work encompasses research on the stories, art, and objects in the Folger’s collection. The 2025-26 fellowship year saw a record 270 applications, with applicants representing 37 countries. The Folger has hosted 50 artist fellows since the program launched in 2015.

“Fellows have the opportunity to explore our collection and discover new material for their creative and critical work, producing everything from articles and books to oil paintings and concertos,” said Patricia Akhimie, Director of the Folger Institute. “Their work advances the value of the humanities in specific and tangible ways, and this exhibition welcomes a broader audience to see the incredible outputs some of our past fellows have created.”

Notable alumni achievements include Gbenga Adesina’s Death Does Not End at the Sea, longlisted for the National Book Award for Poetry and winner of the Raz/Shumaker Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Poetry; Courtney Bailey‘s 2024 production BRITCHES! a play for Lady Romeos for Prison Performing Arts in St. Louis, Missouri; Casey Carsel‘s solo show I can’t shake the stranger out of you at Toi Moroki Centre of Contemporary Art in New Zealand; and Ania Upstill‘s queer, punk, pirate musical Antonio!, which was a critical hit during its 2023 Edinburgh Fringe Festival run.

The Folger’s Artist Fellowship program is unique in its flexibility, offering onsite, virtual, or hybrid residencies without requiring a final product. ​Fellows are selected by an external committee of respected artists, ensuring a breadth of discipline and methodology. ​The Folger also supports past fellows through its Artist Alumni Fellowships, which provide up to $4,000 for public engagement projects. ​

Contemporary Art at the Folger will be on view in the Stuart and Mimi Rose Rare Book and Manuscript Exhibition Hall through April 5, 2026. The Folger Shakespeare Library is located at 201 East Capitol Street, SE, Washington, DC 20003, and is open Tuesday–Sunday from 11am–6pm, with extended Friday hours until 9pm. Admission is free, with a suggested donation of $15. Visitors may also reserve timed-entry passes. For more information about the exhibition, please visit: folger.edu/contemporary-art.

The press kit is available here: folger.edu/contemporary-art-presskit.

For more information about the exhibitions, artist talks, and related events, visit the Folger’s What’s On calendar at www.folger.edu. ​

Contemporary Art at the Folger is curated by Leah Thomas, Public Humanities Program Manager and Manager for the Artistic Research Fellowships program.

EXHIBITIONS SCHEDULE

Elise Ansel

OCTOBER 3–NOVEMBER 9, 2025   

Artist Talk: October 10

While “Old Master” paintings were largely created by men for men, Elise Ansel disrupts this viewpoint by creating feminist translations in oil paint. By employing the open-ended visual languages of color and abstraction, she creates new ways of looking and engaging for modern viewers. As a fellow, Ansel deploys this framework to reinterpret Henry Fuseli’s Macbeth Consulting the Vision of the Armed Head (1793), held in the Folger collection.

Missy Dunaway

NOVEMBER 14, 2025–JANUARY 4, 2026  

Artist Talk: November 21

Blending acrylic ink with research, Missy Dunaway investigates the connections between art, literature, history, and the natural world. Her ongoing project The Birds of Shakespeare visually catalogs every bird mentioned in Shakespeare’s plays and poems—at least 65 species—in consultation with an ornithologist and a scholar of early modern natural history. Dunaway’s detailed work reminds us that wildlife destruction is a cultural loss as well as an environmental one.

Dominick Porras

JANUARY 9–FEBRUARY 15, 2026  

Artist Talk: January 9

Growing up in a detribalized community along the Rio Grande has profoundly shaped Dominick Porras’ identity as a Chicano artist. His photography and new media installations bridge past and future as vessels for exploring the rich tapestry of his heritage. By pairing historical research on the travels of 16^th-century Spanish colonizer Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca with his own linguistic and cultural knowledge of the Coahuiltecan peoples, Porras complicates ideas of contact, survival, and transformation.

Mandy Cano Villalobos

FEBRUARY 20–APRIL 5, 2026 

Artist Talk: TBD

Self-dubbed a “cultural scrapper,” Mandy Cano Villalobos harnesses the leftover materials of home, belonging, and cultural identity. Using everything from broken jewelry and orphaned toys to stained clothing, her mixed-media textiles take inspiration from the luxurious designs of embroidered bindings in the Folger collection and re-create them with the relics of modern capitalist excess. Cano Villalobos uses this juxtaposition to draw attention to the lasting legacies of injustice and environmental damage that are a consequence of early modern colonization and empire building.

About Folger Shakespeare Library

The Folger Shakespeare Library makes Shakespeare’s stories and the world in which he lived accessible. Anchored by the world’s largest Shakespeare collection, the Folger is a cultural organization where curiosity and creativity are embraced, and conversation is always encouraged. Visitors to the Folger can choose how they want to experience the arts and humanities, from interactive exhibitions to captivating performances, and from path-breaking research to transformative educational programming. The Folger welcomes everyone to connect in their own way—from communities throughout Washington, DC, to communities across the globe. Learn more at www.folger.edu.

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