tl;dr

  • Trevor Paglen is the fourth recipient of the LG x Guggenheim Award, which honors artists whose practice explores the intersection of art and technology.
  • Paglen is a previous winner of the MacArthur "Genius Grant" and the Deutsche Börse Photography Prize.
  • Paglen's new book, How to See Like a Machine: Images after AI, will be published by Verso in May 2026.

Guggenheim New York and LG recently announced Trevor Paglen as the recipient of the 2026 LG x Guggenheim Award. The award is part of the LG Guggenheim Art and Technology Initiative, a five-year program that honors and promotes artists whose practice explores the intersection of art and technology. Paglen is the fourth recipient of this prestigious award, following Ayoung Kim, Stephanie Dinkins and Shu Lea Chang.

The award comes with an amount of $100,000, provided to the artist without any restrictions. Paglen was previously a MacArthur Fellow in 2017, another prestigious and valuable award, which is given by the MacArthur Foundation and includes a stipend of $800,000. The MacArthur Fellows Program identifies extraordinarily creative individuals with a record of excellence in academic and other pursuits. It is known colloquially by the moniker “Genius Grant”. Paglen was also the recepient of the Deutsche Börse Photography Prize in 2016, which is one of the most prestigious prizes in the world of photography.

Four musicians on a dimly-lit stage perfom with string instruments with digital images projected on a screen behind them.
Trevor Paglen, Sight Machine, 2017–present. Courtesy Jessica Silverman Gallery, San Francisco; Pace Gallery, New York; and Paglen Studio, Brooklyn. © Trevor Paglen

Paglen's storied practice is characterized by thorough investigations into the infrastructures of surveillance, data extraction, artificial intelligence and state secrecy which have infiltrated every segment of contemporary life. His conceptual approach to revealing these invisible structures draws on his training as a geographer, which he has uniquely combined with the tools of image-making to create images, sculptural works and writings that examine the increasing threat that the interfacing of these technologies poses to human rights.

A five-person international jury, consisting of leading figures in contemporary art, selected Paglen for his groundbreaking contributions in researching art and technology. Paglen, who is in the midst of preparing a new project, gave the following statement to ARTNews: “This is very expensive work to do. The R&D costs are insane. So this definitely helps me fund a project I didn’t know how to fund, one that’s pretty expensive. That’s really exciting.” His new book, How to See Like a Machine: Images after AI, in which he takes a critical look at how computer vision and the advent of generative AI in the 21st century revolutionized our relationship with images, will be published by Verso in May 2026.

Paglen will deliver a performance-lecture titled “The Lizard People are Here!” at the Guggenheim on May 18, 2026, in which he will trace the historical precedents for the manipulation of human perception through a dense network of ideas spanning philosophy, belief, deception and speculation. More information about Trevor Paglen and his work can be found on his site.

The link has been copied!