Generating geniuses: UCLA alums awarded prestigious MacArthur Fellowships

UCLA alumni Gala Porras-Kim, an interdisciplinary artist, and Garrett Bradley, a filmmaker and visual artist, are among 22 people across the arts and sciences to be honored with MacArthur Fellowships, awarded annually to "extraordinarily talented and creative individuals as an investment in their potential," the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation announced today.

The fellowships, commonly known as "genius grants," are given to individuals who demonstrate exceptional creativity and dedication in their fields and the prospect of innovative advances in the future. The recognition comes with a five-year, $800,000 no-strings-attached stipend.

"The 2025 MacArthur Fellows expand the boundaries of knowledge, artistry and human understanding," said Kristen Mack, a vice president at the foundation. "With virtuosity, persistence and courage, they chart new paths toward collaborative, creative and flourishing futures."

To date, 40 UCLA graduates and faculty have received MacArthur Fellowships, the most recent being alumni Juan Felipe Herrera and Wendy Red Star in 2024 and faculty members E. Tendayi Achiume and Park Williams in 2023. Over the past three years, nearly 1 out of every 10 genius grant recipients has been a Bruin.

Gala Porras-Kim: How we interpret and preserve the past

"To me, it's always been more interesting to look at the framing of historical material than the objects themselves," said Gala Porras-Kim, an interdisciplinary artist.

Bringing a deep thoughtfulness and humanity to her work in both 2D and 3D, Porras-Kim creates installations that highlight the more nuanced and meaningful stories that cultural artifacts tell about the people who created and used them - and those who interact with them today.

The MacArthur Foundation highlighted how her "research-intensive practice focuses on objects and forms of knowledge that have been separated from their original contexts" and noted that her "work poses powerful questions about the lives of objects, who shapes their preservation, and how their stories are told."

Born in Bogotá to a Colombian father and South Korean mother, Porras-Kim now lives and works in both London and Los Angeles. She earned a bachelor's degree in art in 2007 and a master's degree in Latin American studies in 2012 from UCLA before receiving a master's in fine arts from the California Institute of the Arts.

At UCLA, Porras-Kim stood out for her intellect and creative talent, said Kevin Terraciano, professor and chair of the UCLA History Department , who served on Porras-Kim's master's thesis committee.

"For a final project, she examined a tradition of whistling among the Zapotecs of Oaxaca as a form of nonverbal communication," he recalled. "She submitted an essay, along with an LP recording of examples, and she did the artwork for the album cover. I have it in my office - it's a work of art. I have followed her success as an artist with admiration."

Currently a visiting critic in sculpture at the Yale School of Art, Porras-Kim has exhibited work around the world, including the Storefront for Art and Architecture in New York City, the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Seoul, the Museo Universitario Arte Contemporáneo in Mexico City and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles.

Some of her celebrated installations include "The weight of a patina of time" (2023) at the Fowler Museum at UCLA, "Precipitation for an Arid Landscape" (2021-23) at Harvard's Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, and "A Hand in Nature" (2024) at the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver, where "she intermingled ancient air with the present-day air in the gallery by releasing molecules trapped in 8,000-year-old glacial ice cores that were deaccessioned from the National Science Foundation."

"I think people should create their own relationships to this historical material so that it still becomes relevant to the world and not just stuck in the past as something that we inherit," Porras-Kim said, "that we might be able to create our own world with that material as well."

Garrett Bradley: Stories and voices from the past and the now

As an artist and filmmaker, Garrett Bradley refuses to be boxed in by genre. Her innovative approach blends documentary, narrative and experimental cinema into something uniquely her own - an empathetic, deeply human exploration of justice, public memory and cultural visibility.

And collaboration is central to her process. Bradley works closely with the people whose stories she tells, making sure their voices come through with authenticity and care. "I'm not just entering somebody's life, and I don't see them as subjects," Bradley told the film website Seventh Row. "I get to know people, and I let them get to know me."

Her portfolio is as wide-ranging as it is powerful, with short and feature films, video installations, photography, and even artist books and visual essays. Among her most celebrated projects is "America" (2019), a multichannel installation that uses as its inspirational jumping-off point "Lime Kiln Club Field Day," made in 1915 and thought to be the oldest surviving film featuring an all-Black cast and integrated crew. Bradley created 12 new black-and-white film vignettes that echoed the feel of early cinema, which she then wove together with "Lime Kiln" and other archival footage, reimagining moments from early 20th-century Black life and offering audiences a poetic, contemporary "silent film" that reclaimed a forgotten history.

But Bradley's work isn't only about the past. Many of her films grow out of the here-and-now in her adopted city of New Orleans, including the short film "Alone" (2017) and "Time" (2020), her breakthrough feature documentary, which focuses on the ripple effects of incarceration on families by highlighting the efforts of Sibil Richardson to raise six sons while fighting to free her husband from a 60-year prison sentence. Bradley interweaves present-day footage of Richardson and her family with home videos recorded over the years, capturing the resilience, love and the endurance of a family carving out joy in the face of loss.

Bradley, who grew up in New York City as the child of two artists, received her bachelor's degree from Smith College before earning a master's in directing from the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television in 2012. While at UCLA, she began work on her film "Below Dreams" (2014), which eventually screened at the Tribeca Film Festival and was shown by the UCLA Film & Television Archive.

In addition to Tribeca, Bradley has taken her films to major festivals like Sundance and the New York Film Festival, and her work now lives in some of the world's most prestigious collections, including the Museum of Modern Art, the Studio Museum in Harlem, the Tate Modern in London and the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery.