Ranu Mukherjee, dean of the School of Film/Video at CalArts, has been named a recipient of a 2026 Ruth Award from the Ruth Foundation for the Arts.
Now in its third year, the Ruth Awards recognize contemporary artists working across North America whose practices advance creative inquiry, community connection, and structural change. Each award includes an unrestricted $100,000 prize distributed over two years.
Mukherjee is one of five artists honored in 2026. The other recipients are artists Yuji Agematsu, Will Rawls, Ellen Sebastian Chang, and Anna Martine Whitehead. According to the foundation, this year’s awardees were selected for work that embraces materiality, movement, and explorations of time through innovative artistic approaches.
“Each year, we receive a multitude of nominations that guide us toward the most inspiring and thought-provoking artists and practices today,” says Program Director Kim Nguyen. “Our world is better and more complex with artists in it, and this award acknowledges the necessity of supporting rigorous creative practice, critical thinking, and the freedom of artistic expression. It is an honor to reward this year’s artists for being responsive and empathetic, for their dedication to emergent strategies, for their constant pursuit of the big idea. We hope that this recognition carries them onward into the future—we need them more than ever.”
Mukherjee’s practice spans painting, film installation, performance, animation, choreography, and textile-based work. Her projects engage questions of ecology, diaspora, futurity, and colonial histories through layered visual and temporal structures. Her exhibition history includes projects at the 18th Street Arts Center in Santa Monica, the de Young Museum and Asian Art Museum in San Francisco, the Singapore Biennale, and the Karachi Biennial. Her first monograph, Shadowtime, was published in 2021 by Gallery Wendi Norris.
Mukherjee was appointed dean of CalArts’ School of Film/Video in 2024. Prior to joining CalArts, she served as professor and chair of Film at California College of the Arts in San Francisco and spent eight years on the Visual Arts faculty at Goldsmiths College, University of London. At CalArts, she leads the Institute’s largest school and works across undergraduate and graduate programs in film and moving-image practice.
The Ruth Foundation for the Arts was established in 2022 to support visual and performing arts organizations and artists through an artist-driven grantmaking model. Its namesake, Ruth DeYoung Kohler II (1941-2020), was a Wisconsin-based curator, educator, and “a champion of underrecognized artists and art forms.”
A full list of 2026 Ruth Award recipients can be found on the Ruth Foundation for the Arts website.
