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Maxwell/Hanrahan Foundation Announces 2026 Awards in Craft Recipients

Five artists, whose practices range from traditional Chinese papermaking to abstract quilting, will each receive $100,000.

By Jon Spayde
May 21, 2026

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Craft industry

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Photo by David Hale, courtesy of Visual Arts Center of Richmond

Hong Hong, 河/River, 2021–24, hand-formed paper made with repurposed paper products, sun, rain, acrylic paint, sumi ink, poems, a feather from a northern flicker, fallen foliage, and water from the Massachusetts Bay, White Oak Bayou, and Arkansas River, 109 x 174 x 45 in.

This afternoon, the Maxwell/Hanrahan Foundation announced the winners of its 2026 Awards in Craft.

The annual honor from the San Francisco–based foundation recognizes artists who, according to Maxwell/Hanrahan, are both tradition-minded and innovative—who exhibit “a unique and visionary approach to material-based practice, stewardship of cultural traditions, and craft’s potential to connect people, places and ideas.”

Photo by Roberto Benavidez

Roberto Benavidez, Comedores de Huevos (Birdr No. 4), 2023, paper, glue, wire, tape, paperboard and crepe paper, 6 x 16 x 6 in.

The awardees:

Roberto Benavidez (Los Angeles, California), a figurative sculptor who specializes in a traditionally ephemeral form: the piñata. The mixed-race queer artist’s paper craftsmanship explores themes of race, ephemerality, beauty, and sin. Read more about Benavidez in “Raising the Piñata” in the Spring 2024 issue of American Craft, and read an interview with him in The Queue.

Melissa Cody (Long Beach, California), a fourth-generation Navajo weaver who uses traditional Navajo and jacquard looms to create tapestries rooted in the Germantown Revival style of Navajo weaving, which renders traditional motifs in brightly colored commercial yarns.

Hong Hong (Tulsa, Oklahoma), who dramatizes the relationship of the human body with the celestial world—weather, the sun, and the moon—through practices and performances employing traditional Chinese papermaking, painting, photography, and ritual. Read more about Hong’s practice in “Rituals of Making” in the Spring 2024 issue of American Craft.

Loretta Pettway Bennett (Huntsville, Alabama), great-great-great granddaughter of Dinah Miller, Gee’s Bend’s earliest known quilter. Widely exhibited, Pettway Bennett often uses innovative colors drawn from her international travels to render motifs handed down through the family. Read about how she shares her practice with visitors in “Learning from Makers” in the Fall 2024 issue of American Craft.

Paul Andrew Wandless (Chicago, Illinois), an artist who unites art and craft, projecting an unmistakable style across many media: clay, prints, stone, leather, and metal. He’s also the author of books on ceramic processes and an educator in demand for workshops.

Photo © Melissa S. Cody, courtesy of the artist and Garth Greenan Gallery, New York.

Melissa Cody, Under Cover of Webbed Skies, 2021, wool warp, weft, selvedge cords, aniline dyes, 36.75 x 25.25 in.

“What we try to do in our nomination process, is to assemble as broad a group of distinguished artists as we can, to show the breadth that craft as a field holds,” says Rebekah Frank, program officer at the Maxwell/Hanrahan Foundation. “I believe we have succeeded with this group, whose work ranges from experimental papermaking, quilting and ceramics, to traditional weaving that’s also innovative. All are looking at different ways to incorporate traditional technique with more contemporary ideas.”

The prize, which grants $100,000 to each recipient, is one of the largest unrestricted craft awards in the nation.

The foundation, established in 2018 by digital designer and Rhode Island School of Design alumna Delle Maxwell and her husband Pat Hanrahan, an emeritus professor of computer science at Stanford University, provides direct support to people it deems to be innovators in in four areas: field-based science, art and craft, teaching, and the protection of the natural world.

The Maxwell/Hanrahan Foundation also provides support for the American Craft Council’s Early Career Artist Program. Learn more and apply here.

Photo by Stephen Pitkin / Pitkin Studio

Loretta Pettway Bennett, Returning to Gee's Bend 1, 2021, hand and machine-pieced and hand quilted from Qunnie Pettway's fabrics, including vintage corduroy made by Sears Roebuck, 80 x 64 in.

Photo courtesy of the artist

Paul Andrew Wandless, Potters of Earth and Sea, 2021, clay monoprint, cast earthenware, underglaze, watercolor underglaze, linocut image, wood frame. 16.5 x 23 x 2 in.

Jon Spayde is a writer and editor in Saint Paul, Minnesota. A former contributing editor to American Craft, he writes on art, psychology, education, and personal growth for a number of regional and national publications.

Learn more about the Maxwell/Hanrahan Awards in Craft on the foundation's website.

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