LINCOLN, Mass. – Visual artist and filmmaker Sky Hopinka (Ho-Chunk Nation/Pechanga Band of Luiseño Indians) has been named the 2026 recipient of the Rappaport Prize by deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum. Hopinka’s Rappaport Art Prize Lecture will take place at 6 p.m. on Oct. 8 at deCordova.
Established in 2000 and endowed in perpetuity in 2010, the prize was established by The
Phyllis and Jerome Lyle Rappaport Foundation to celebrate the achievements of contemporary artists in New England.
“This award means so much, and I’m honored to be included in such an esteemed group of artists,” Hopinka said. The support is encouraging and freeing and gives me a chance to keep doing this work and to push past what I thought was possible.”
Hopinka’s photographs, films, and texts trace his journeys through Indigenous homelands, recentering Indigenous ways of seeing and telling. Working across sound, image, and language he treats his work as a vessel for culture – where words, landscapes, and memory hold and carry one another across personal, documentary, and experimental modes. His work listens closely to language as living relation, revealing how it shapes and is shaped by place and belonging. Through this, Hopinka destabilizes entrenched colonial perspectives and related descriptions of land, sea, sky, myth, and personhood.
“The Rappaport Foundation is delighted with the deCordova jury’s selection of Sky Hopinka. We’d never before encountered art that so thoroughly fuses and refracts language, place, and experience,” said Jonathan Rapaport, who leads the Rappaport Foundation’s Arts and Culture Committee. “Swimming through Sky’s oeuvre is an encounter with a shapeshifter: photographs stitched into poems, text assuming visual form, and films that unspool into meditations. The foundation is honored to recognize such an original and prolific artist.”
Hopinka’s work has been described by art critics as poetic, richly evoked, and deeply personal. He avoids traditional narrative structure, allowing viewers to enter his films at any point. Landscapes are like archives of memory. Visually abstract, his work uses vivid, high-saturation color and stop-motion effects to create dreamlike moods.
New York Times’ art critic Holland Cotter said of Hopinka’s work in 2020, “His work rivals in visual and linguistic beauty any new art I’ve seen in some time.”
“We are thrilled to recognize Sky Hopinka as deCordova’s 2026 Rappaport Art Prize winner,” shared Sarah Montross, The Trustees’ Museum Director and Chief Curator. “The Prize recognizes the rich groundwork he has laid thus far as an artist and seeds the future of his filmmaking and photography.”
“Sky Hopinka’s work carries language and land in ways that feel both deeply personal and expansive. Supporting Native artists through these prizes is a way of honoring that continuity — ensuring these voices are not just celebrated, but sustained for future generations” says Tess Lukey (Aquinnah Wampanoag), Associate Curator of Native American Art.
Hopinka’s films, videos, and photographs are in collections at the Museum of Modern Art, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Museum für Moderne Kunst in Frankfurt, Germany, The Whitney Museum, the Amon Carter Museum of Art, and the Walker Art Center amongst others.
He was a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University in 2018- 2019, a Sundance Art of Nonfiction Fellow for 2019, an Art Matters Fellow in 2019, a recipient of a 2020 Herb Alpert Award for Film/Video, a 2020 Guggenheim Fellow, and was a 2021 Forge Project Fellow. He received the 2022 Infinity Award in Art from the International Center of Photography, is a 2022 MacArthur Fellow and was a winner of the 2023 Baloise Art Prize at Art Basel. He currently lives in Cambridge, MA, and Brooklyn, NY, and is an assistant professor in the department of Art, Film, and Visual Studies at Harvard University.
About the Rappaport Art Prize
Since its inception in 2000, the Rappaport Art Prize has been an investment in both individual artists and the broader art community. Founded and funded by the Phyllis and Jerome Lyle Rappaport Foundation, the Rappaport Art Prize follows the Foundation’s mission of promoting leadership in art, public policy, and medical research. Endowed at, and selected annually by, deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, the Rappaport Art Prize supports artists while educating the public about developments in American contemporary art. In 2022, the prize increased from $35,000 to $50,000. The prize celebrates the achievement and potential of an artist who has demonstrated significant creativity and vision and encourages the recipient to continue a career of innovative art making. Together, deCordova and the Rappaport Foundation hope to create a community of accomplished artists whose careers have been enhanced by the recognition of the Rappaport Prize.
Each year, deCordova invites art professionals from around the country — museum directors, curators, collectors, and artists — to submit nominations for the Prize based on established criteria. After reviewing the nominations, as well as suggesting their own nominations, deCordova convened a jury to consider finalists. This year’s jury for the Rappaport Prize were Kate Gilbert, Executive Director, Boston Public Art Triennial; Jaime DeSimone, Chief Curator, Farnsworth Art Museum, Rockland, Maine; and Jessica Hong, Chief Curator, Kemper Museum, Kansas City, MO.
For more information visit thetrustees.org/program/rappaport-prize.
About deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum
Established in 1950 and located just twenty miles west of Boston, deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum is dedicated to fostering the creation and exploration of contemporary sculpture and art through a dynamic slate of rotation exhibitions, innovative learning opportunities, a constantly changing thirty-acre landscape of large-scale, outdoor, modern, and contemporary sculpture, and site-specific installations. To learn more, visit thetrustees.org/decordova.
About The Trustees
The Trustees is Massachusetts’ largest—and the nation’s first—land conservation and preservation nonprofit. Today, through the support of Members, donors, and partners, The Trustees helps conserve nearly 52,000 acres and welcomes the public to more than 120 inspiring locations across the state to experience landscapes where nature, wildlife, and people all thrive.
Past Rappaport Art Prize Winners
2025 Alison Croney Moses
2024 Jeremy Frey
2023 Tomashi Jackson
2022 Steve Locke
2021 Katherine Bradford
2020 Sonya Clark
2019 Daniela Rivera
2018 Titus Kaphar
2017 Sam Durant
2016 Barkley Hendricks
2015 Matt Saunders
2014 Liz Deschenes
2013 Ann Pibal
2012 Suara Welitoff
2011 Orly Genger
2010 Liza Johnson
2009 Dave Cole
2008 Ursula von Rydingsvard
2007 Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons
2006 Abelardo Morell
2005 Sarah Walker
2004 Debra Olin
2003 John Bisbee
2002 Lars-Erik Fisk
2001 Annee Spileos Scott
2000 Jennifer Hall