The Vilcek Foundation announces its largest-ever cohort of prizewinners with the 2025 Vilcek Foundation Prizes. This year, the foundation honors 14 prizewinners with a total of $950,000 in awards. 

The 2025 Vilcek Foundation Prizes in Biomedical Science, in Visual Arts, and in Curatorial Work are awarded to outstanding immigrant professionals whose work has had a profound impact on their field, and on scholarship and society more broadly. The Vilcek Prize for Excellence and the Marica Vilcek Prize in Art History are awarded to U.S.-born individuals who have had a profound impact on culture through their intellectual and institutional leadership. 

Awarded annually since 2006, the Vilcek Foundation’s prizes are central to its mission: raising awareness of and celebrating how vital immigration is for a robust society, and fostering appreciation for the arts and humanities more broadly by recognizing cultural vanguards. 

Meet the 2025 Vilcek Foundation Prizewinners

• Marianne Bronner (b. Hungary)
• Guadalupe Maravilla (b. El Salvador)
• Oluremi C. Onabanjo (b. United Kingdom)
• Henry Louis Gates Jr. (b. United States)
• Francesca Du Brock (b. United States)
• Elham Azizi (b. Iran)
• Guosong Hong (b. China)
• Maayan Levy (b. Israel)
• Selva Aparicio (b. Spain)
• Felipe Baeza (b. Mexico)
• Jeffrey Meris (b. Haiti, raised in the Bahamas)
• Donna Honarpisheh (b. Canada, to Iranian immigrant parents)
• Aimé Iglesias Lukin (b. Argentina)
• Bernardo Mosqueira (b. Brazil)

Vilcek Prize in Biomedical Science

Marianne Bronner

Edward B. Lewis Professor of Biology and Director of the Beckman Institute, California Institute of Technology; president of the International Society for Developmental Biology

Born in Hungary

Marianne Bronner receives the Vilcek Prize in Biomedical Science for her career research on neural crest stem cells and their role in the development of the peripheral nervous system, heart, and craniofacial skeleton in vertebrate organisms.

Vilcek Prize in Visual Arts

Guadalupe Maravilla

Artist; Board Member, Andy Warhol Foundation

Born in El Salvador

Guadalupe Maravilla receives the Vilcek Prize in Visual Arts for his sculptures, installations, and performances that combine symbol, sound, and ritual. His immersive and evocative works explore concepts of migration, transcendence, and the human condition.

Vilcek Prize in Curatorial Work

Oluremi C. Onabanjo

Peter Schub Curator of Photography, The Museum of Modern Art

Born in the United Kingdom

Oluremi C. Onabanjo receives the Vilcek Prize in Curatorial Work for her work to examine the power, position, and production of Blackness in relation to the unfinished global history of the photographic medium. 

Vilcek Prize for Excellence

Henry Louis Gates Jr.

Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and Director of the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research, Harvard University; Host and Executive Producer of “Finding Your Roots with Henry Louis Gates Jr.”

Born in the United States

Henry Louis Gates Jr. receives the Vilcek Prize for Excellence for his contributions as a scholar of African American literature and culture; for his leadership in contemporary discourse on race, literature, and immigration; and for his commitment to excellence in public education.

Marica Vilcek Prize in Art History

Francesca Du Brock

Chief Curator, Anchorage Museum

Born in the United States

Francesca Du Brock receives the Marica Vilcek Prize in Art History for her holistic and comprehensive approach to exhibition curation and to public education and engagement with art through museum programming.

Vilcek Prizes for Creative Promise in Biomedical Science

Elham Azizi

Herbert & Florence Irving Associate Professor of Cancer Data Research and Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering, Columbia University

Born in Iran

Elham Azizi receives the Vilcek Prize for Creative Promise in Biomedical Science for her research engaging machine learning, statistics, genomics, and bioengineering to derive principles of cancer initiation, progression, and response to immunotherapies in cancer patients. 

Guosong Hong

Assistant Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at Stanford Medicine; Member, Bio-X; Institute Scholar, Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute

Born in China

Guosong Hong receives the Vilcek Prize for Creative Promise in Biomedical Science for the development of novel neuroengineering tools combining materials science and biology that engage ultrasound, light, and radio-frequency-based interfaces to study the nervous system.

Maayan Levy

Assistant Professor of Pathology, Stanford University School of Medicine

Born in Israel

Maayan Levy receives the Vilcek Prize for Creative Promise in Biomedical Science for her interdisciplinary approach to developing metabotherapy, engaging the potential therapeutic applications of metabolites as vehicles and targets to prevent and treat disease, including cancer. 

Vilcek Prizes for Creative Promise in Visual Arts

Selva Aparicio

Artist and Assistant Professor in Fibers and Material Studies at Alfred University, New York

Born in Spain

Selva Aparicio receives the Vilcek Prize for Creative Promise in Visual Arts for her evocative sculptures and installations, which use organic materials and ritualistic imagery to explore death, mourning, memory, and the fleeting nature of time.

Felipe Baeza

Artist

Born in Mexico

Felipe Baeza receives the Vilcek Prize for Creative Promise in Visual Arts for his studio practice and his poetic visual style that engages multiple mediums and traditions to explore spirituality, otherness, and regeneration.

Jeffrey Meris

Artist, Board Member, Gutenberg Arts; Visiting Critic, Rhode Island School of Design

Born in Haiti, raised in the Bahamas

Jeffrey Meris receives the Vilcek Prize for Creative Promise in Visual Arts for his work engaging materiality, installation, and performance to explore the power of ecology and embodiment to liberate and heal from individual and historical trauma. 

Vilcek Prizes for Creative Promise in Curatorial Work

Donna Honarpisheh

Knight Foundation Associate Curator of Art and Research, the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami (ICA Miami); Podcast host, “Tomorrow is the Problem,” ICA Miami; Professor of Comparative Literature

Born in Canada to Iranian immigrant parents

Donna Honarpisheh receives the Vilcek Prize for Creative Promise in Curatorial Work for her multidisciplinary approach to addressing the historic and ongoing omissions of global artists and movements in Western art history and institutions.

Aimé Iglesias Lukin

Director and Chief Curator of Art at the Americas Society; Graduate Committee Member of the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College

Born in Argentina 

Aimé Iglesias Lukin receives the Vilcek Prize for Creative Promise in Curatorial Work for her leadership promoting the art of the Americas, and her focused initiatives to achieve recognition for historically underrepresented migrant and women artists. 

Bernardo Mosqueira

Chief Curator, Institute for Studies on Latin American Art (ISLAA), New York; Artistic Director, Solar dos Abacaxis, Rio de Janeiro; Director, Premio FOCO ArtRio, Rio de Janeiro

Born in Brazil

Bernardo Mosqueira receives the Vilcek Prize for Creative Promise in Curatorial Work for his commitment to building institutions, frameworks, and platforms for emerging and radical artists, especially those from the Global South, Latin America, and diasporic communities.