On Monday, the Greater Milwaukee Foundation and Lynden Sculpture Garden announced the five recipients of the 2026 Mary L. Nohl Fund Fellowships for Individual Artists.
Evelyn Patricia Terry and Della Wells were selected in the Established Artists category, and Nomka Enkhee, Laura Farahzad Mayer and Yinan Wang in the Emerging Artists category.
It’s time to pick your Milwaukee favorites for the year!
Each year, the program awards unrestricted funds to visual artists based in Milwaukee, Waukesha, Ozaukee or Washington counties to create new work or complete work in progress. The two Established Artists received $20,000 and the three Emerging Artists receive $10,000, plus $5,000 for each of the five fellows toward professional development/production budget.
Evelyn Patricia Terry is an artist, curator and mentor who works in “oil portraits, found-object assemblages, marked-up sewn recycled drawings and book art using her recycled monotypes,” according to the press release. A recent commissioned installation at ThriveOn King features a long table with a sculpture, dolls and replica food.
Della Wells is a collage artist known for a narrative style that depicts Mambo Land, a conceptual environment where “Black women rule and are the masters of their own destiny.” Wells is also the 2023 Betty Awards Arts Advocate honoree. Both Terry and Wells have been recognized as the City of Milwaukee Artist of the Year, in 2014 and 2016 respectively.
Nomka Enkhee is an artist exploring repetition and Mongolian oral storytelling, and co-directs e.s.r., an artist-run exhibition space. Laura Farahzad Mayer is an artist and professor at the Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design who frequently works in printmaking. Yinan Wang is a Beijing-born filmmaker who explores our sense of home.
The cohort will showcase their resulting work in a group exhibition at the Haggerty Museum of Art during summer 2027.
The competition drew 168 applicants, and the winners were chosen by jurors Anthony Graham at Berkeley Art Museum, Mia Lopez at McNay Art Museum in San Antonio, Texas, and Eileen Jeng Lynch at the Bronx Museum. Established Artists finalists were Mike Gibisser, David Najib Kasir, Brit Krohmer and Heidi Parkes; Emerging Artists finalists were Kayle Karbowski, Brandom Terres-Sanchez, and Sean Williamson.
The fellowship is funded by the Greater Milwaukee Foundation’s Mary L. Nohl Fund and administered by Lynden Sculpture Garden executive director Polly Morris. Nohl, an acclaimed Wisconsin artist, bequeathed $9.8 million to the foundation after her death in 2001 to support visual artists in the region.
