Mission
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The DAG Foundation champions innovative artists whose work inspires, challenges, and enriches our communities. We do this by supporting artists in literature, music, and visual art as they work to build thriving, sustainable careers.​ At the DAG Foundation, we believe that music, visual art, and literature are the pillars of the U.S. art community. Supporting individual artists in each of these genres contributes to the health and diversity of that community as a whole.
CONGRATULATIONS
TO THE 2026 DAG PRIZE WINNERS.
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The DAG Prize for Music :
LUZ ELENA MENDOZA
Luz Elena Mendoza is a first-generation Mexican American producer and multi- disciplinary artist. She is the visionary force behind the critically acclaimed project Y La Bamba, with accolades from NPR, KEXP, and Pitchfork; Y La Bamba’s seven studio albums include Court the Storm, Mujeres, and, most recently, Lucha. The DAG prize will be used to facilitate final production of Y La Bamba’s next studio album — with a working title of Ramos — a high-fidelity archive inspired by her artistic evolution over the last couple of years. The judges praised the “multicultural and sonic uniqueness” of Mendoza’s work.
(photo credit: Nalani Hernandez-Melo)
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The DAG Prize for Visual Art:
ERICK ALEJANDRO HERNÁNDEZ
Erick Alejandro Hernández was born in Cuba and lives in Brooklyn. Rooted in highly temporal settings (a subway commute, a waiting room), his work explores how forms in painting can shift to better hold complex individual and collective histories. He has received numerous grants and fellowships, including from the Bronx Museum AIM Program and the Carol Schlosberg Memorial Prize for Excellence in Painting, and has had recent solo exhibitions with DIMIN, Murmurs, and Yossi Milo, along with group shows at the Bronx Museum, Perrotin, and others. In his current project, Topographies of Symbolic Space, painting explores the topographic relationships between symbolic spaces — what exists above, below, or in between — through a large-scale multipanel installation. The judges praised “the powerful investigative and allegorical exploration of shared experience” in Hernandez’s work.
(photo credit: Gioncarlo Valentine)
The DAG Prize for Literature:
TEGAN NIA SWANSON
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Tegan Nia Swanson is a queer teaching artist whose work explores gender, place, and accountability. Her first novel, Things We Found When the Water Went Down, was called “an inventive and beguiling debut” by Kirkus and "a powerful, polyphonic story of survival and healing" by Chicago Review of Books. Her novel-in-progress, We Do Not Dream of Salt Plagues, is a climate gothic love letter to queer and trans community. The judges praised Swanson’s work for its “purposeful” politics, noting the “uniqueness and audacity of her vision.”
Finalists for the 2026 DAG Prize.
Music :
Alwyn Robinson
Visual Art :
Liz Cooper
Marc Newsome
Sarah Trigg
Literature :
Sophia Terazawa
Ali Raz
Marcus Clayton
Jefferey Spivey
Maddie Norris
Mihret Sibhat
DAG Latest
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Rodrigo Restrepo Montoya, who was a finalist for the 2025 DAG Prize for Literature, has sold his second novel, BRUTO, to Catapult Books. The novel, which was the project Rodrigo proposed for the DAG Prize, will be published in 2027.
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Celebrating the 2025 Inaugural DAG recipients with a night on the town. Congratulations to Ziba Rajabi, Michael Zapata and Elizabeth Ziman.
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The winner of the 2026 DAG Prize for Literature, Michael Zapata, was profiled on Telemundo's "El Poder in Tí," where he talked about Latinofuturism, building bridges between cultures, and the significance of DAG for the work of innovative artists.
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The 2026 Whitney Biennial opens on March 8, featuring 56 of the most innovative American artists and collaborative teams working today.
