South Arts 2025 Southern Prize & State Fellowships for Visual Arts

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The LSU Museum of Art presents the exhibition South Arts Southern Prize & State Fellowships for Visual Arts, on view June 4–September 6, 2026, a touring exhibition featuring artwork by the 2025 Southern Prize & State Fellowship for Visual Arts recipients. South Arts logo Launched in 2017 by South Arts, the Southern Prize & State Fellowships for Visual Arts program celebrates and supports exemplary contemporary art in the American South. This exhibition features work by the nine 2025 recipients—one each from Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Tennessee—representing the South Arts region. Represented artists and Fellows include: Loretta Pettway Bennett (Alabama), Gonzalo Fuenmayor (Florida), Masela Nkolo (Georgia), Travis Townsend (Kentucky), Edgar Cano (Louisiana), Stephen Phillips (Mississippi), Lydia C. Thompson (North Carolina), Felicia Greenlee (South Carolina), and Tabitha Arnold (Tennessee). The 2025 Visual Arts cohort presents a striking synthesis of past and present, channeling a timeless futurism that intertwines ancestral craft with contemporary urgency. Using ceramics, textiles, drawing, and sculpture, these artists revive time-honored practices—from quilting traditions and African mask-making to apocalyptic Biblical imagery—recasting them within today’s global narratives of migration, labor, and identity. Their work is rooted in a deep respect for material expertise: the delicate sheen of a ceramic glaze, the expressive tension of charcoal on paper, the tactile complexity of woven fiber. Yet the objects resist nostalgia. Instead, they stretch tradition into new, often surreal forms that feel both grounded and speculative. The result is an aesthetic of tension and harmony, where history and imagination coexist, with each work serving as both a cultural relic and visionary statement, resonating powerfully within the shifting Southern landscape. South Arts is a nonprofit regional arts organization dedicated to advancing Southern vitality through the arts across the American South by supporting artists, organizations, and communities. Through grantmaking, professional development, touring exhibitions, and regional initiatives in partnership with the National Endowment for the Arts and state arts agencies, it expands access to the arts and strengthens cultural infrastructure throughout its nine-state region. South Arts’ Southern Prize & State Fellowships for Visual Arts is supported by the Maxwell/Hanrahan Foundation, the Windgate Foundation, Southern First Bank, The Warner Fund, and many generous donors. Learn more about South Arts by visiting southarts.org.