The art of ‘genius’: UCLA’s Rodney McMillian wins a MacArthur Fellowship

More than two decades ago, artist Rodney McMillian spotted a battered armchair by a trash heap, brought it to his art studio and began thinking about what happens when everyday objects are removed from one setting and placed in another.

His resulting found-object sculpture, "Chair," was an early example of the type of artistic inquiry that has defined his career, evoking questions about class, poverty and history, both broad and personal.

Now McMillian, a professor in the UCLA Department of Art and head of the department's sculpture area, has been recognized as a 2026 MacArthur Fellow by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, joining 19 other "exceptional, creative and inspiring people" who make up this year's class.

The prestigious fellowships, commonly known as "genius grants," are awarded annually to individuals across the sciences, arts and humanities who demonstrate exceptional creativity, dedication and potential for future innovation. The award comes with an $800,000 no-strings-attached stipend paid over five years.

McMillian, who has taught at UCLA since 2009 and served as chair of the art department from 2023 to 2025, works across a variety of media, from sculpture and painting to video and performance art, often incorporating thrifted and discarded domestic objects, political speeches, songs and other historical source material.

At the heart of his work, he said, are questions about how history is understood and passed down. "What does history mean? And where did those narratives come from? There are facts within history, but who has taught us those facts and what's the basis for those teachings?"

History is present tense

For McMillian, those questions have deep roots. Born in Columbia, South Carolina, he grew up with parents who taught him about slavery, Jim Crow and the Civil Rights Movement. As a kid, his family had him watch the TV miniseries "Roots" and connect the history unfolding on screen to the landscape and world around him. At the time, the Confederate flag still flew above the South Carolina state house.

"Being from South Carolina has been perhaps the core of my understanding as an individual and also as an artist," McMillian said. "And I think so much of that is because there's so much history there that I grew up with."

That historical understanding took on a broader scope during his time as a Peace Corps volunteer in Guinea-Bissau in the mid-1990s, where he discovered parallels between that country's history of slavery and colonial rule and the history of the American South.

The relationship between past and present became a defining feature of his art. "History is present tense," he told the Los Angeles Times in 2018. "It's present for me."

Reframing American history

Across his work - which has been exhibited throughout the country, including at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Studio Museum in Harlem and the University of Pennsylvania's Institute of Contemporary Art - McMillian has repeatedly revisited places, institutions and political language through which history continues to resonate, excavating issues of race, class, power, and the promises and contradictions of American life.

In "The White House II," he transformed the façade of the presidential residence into a monumental, hand-sewn expanse of white vinyl. "Untitled (The Supreme Court Painting)" depicts the nation's highest court as if it were dissolving into the canvas, and "From Asterisks in Dockery" recreates the interior of a historical Black chapel in rural Mississippi in red vinyl and wood. In his video piece "A Migration Tale," a masked, cloaked figure journeys from South Carolina to Harlem, retracing the path of the Great Migration. And in "Untitled (The Great Society) I," McMillian recites President Lyndon B. Johnson's landmark 1964 "Great Society" speech, revisiting its calls to combat poverty and racial injustice decades after it was delivered.

More recently, in a series of works on paper featuring abstract representations of sunsets in hues of magenta, crimson and azure, McMillian has considered the history and persistent after-effects of redlining in the United States. Created by pouring and pooling paint, ink and other media onto paper, the works incorporate quotations from published sources about discriminatory housing policies and their lasting effects.

"For people encountering my work for the first time, I hope that they'll think about the histories that they know and maybe question some of those things," McMillian said. "I think that would be a wonderful outcome."

McMillian is the 41st UCLA faculty member or graduate to receive a MacArthur Fellowship. Most recently, alumni Gala Porras-Kim and Garrett Bradley were named fellows in 2025, alumni Juan Felipe Herrera and Wendy Red Star were honored in 2024, and faculty members E. Tendayi Achiume and Park Williams received fellowships in 2023.