Three Artists from Claire Trevor School of the Arts join the Guggenheim Foundation’s 100th Class of Fellows

Department of Art Assistant Professor Coleman Collins and alumni among recipients of prestigious fellowship in the arts

Three of UC Irvine’s Claire Trevor School of the Arts (CTSA) community members have been awarded 2025 Guggenheim Fellowships, one of the nation’s highest honors for scholarly and creative excellence. Assistant Professor Coleman Collins, alumnus Phil Chang (B.A. ’97) and alumna Charisse Weston (M.F.A. ’19) were selected by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation from nearly 3,000 applicants nationwide for this year’s fellowship. They join 188 artists, writers and scholars across 52 disciplines in receiving the acclaimed grant, which supports innovators who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or creative ability in the arts.

Founded in 1925, the Guggenheim Fellowship program has a storied legacy of supporting artists and scholars at the forefront of their fields. Past fellows include iconic figures in arts and letters, from Martha Graham to James Baldwin. Since its founding, the Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship has supported over 19,000 writers, scholars, scientists and artists in over 50 different fields of study across the fine arts, social sciences, humanities and natural sciences.

About the 2025 Guggenheim Fellows

Coleman Collins is an assistant professor of art at UC Irvine and an interdisciplinary artist, writer and researcher. Collins has studied the connections between “things in the world” and their digital approximations, paying attention to how real and virtual spaces are socially produced. Working across sculpture, video, photography and text, Collins attempts to locate a synthesis between seemingly opposed terms: subject and object; object and image; original and duplicate; freedom and captivity. Before joining UC Irvine in 2023, Collins was a resident at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. He participated in the Whitney Museum of American Art’s Independent Study Program and earned an M.F.A. at UCLA. Collins will use the Guggenheim Fellowship to produce a body of work continuing his exploration into the resonances between the emergent cultures of diasporic groups and the effects of digital methods of transmission, copying and reiteration. 

Charisse Weston (M.F.A. ’19) is a conceptual artist whose practice interrogates Black interior life, resistance, and the technologies of surveillance and control. Working in sculpture, glass, text and installation, Weston creates poetic meditations on secrecy and protection in Black culture. She has garnered national attention for her bold vision, most recently as an exhibiting artist in the Whitney Biennial 2024 in New York. Weston has also been named a 2023 United States Artists Fellow and is represented by a leading contemporary art gallery. 

Phil Chang (B.A. ’02) is a Los Angeles–based artist, associate professor of art at CSU Bakersfield and faculty at Bard’s M.F.A. program. Celebrated for his experimental approach to photography, Chang’s work challenges the definition of a photograph, often emphasizing the materiality and time-based nature of photographic processes. He has presented solo exhibitions in New York and L.A., and his pieces are held in the permanent collections of the J. Paul Getty Museum, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and other institutions. 

With the addition of Collins, Weston and Chang as Guggenheim recipients, CTSA continues its impact in global art and scholarship. Their Guggenheim Fellowships highlight the strength of UC Irvine’s faculty and alumni network, which nurtures the next generation of creative leaders. UC Irvine's Claire Trevor School of the Arts now has 19 Guggenheim Fellows from the Department of Art.

UC Irvine Art Guggenheim Fellows

2025
Coleman Collins, assistant professor
Phil Chang, B.A. '97
Charisse Weston, M.F.A. '19

2024
Gina Osterloh, M.F.A. ’07
Lorraine O'Grady, assistant professor
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2022
Bruce Yonemoto, professor of art
Alison O'Daniel, M.F.A. ’10
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2020
Jennifer Pastor, professor of art
Rheim Alkadhi, M.F.A. ’99
Stacy Kranitz, M.F.A. ’14
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2019
Daniel Joseph Martinez, professor of art
Hồng-Ân Trương, M.F.A. ’08
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2017
Ken Gonzalez-Day, M.F.A. ’95
James Luna, ’77

2015
Miles Coolidge, professor of art
Russell Crotty, M.F.A. ’80

2013
Kim Abeles, M.F.A. ’80

2008
Simon Leung, professor of art
Ruben Ochoa, M.F.A. ’03