Engaging Artists
About the Program
Engaging Artists (EA) is More Art’s 2-tiered, Fellowship and Commission program for artists seeking to both develop and sustain their public art and socially-engaged practice. The program curriculum encompasses a professional development series, public art commission opportunities, mentorship, and peer exchange.
Fellowship
More Art’s year-long Engaging Artists Fellowship is designed to help emerging NYC artists and community organizers develop and sustain a socially engaged and public art practice. Through mentorship, peer exchange, workshops and artist talks responsive to the cohort’s interests, and access to programming opportunities across New York City, Fellows deepen their work within a collaborative learning environment. This laboratory-style framework brings together 6–8 emerging and underrepresented artists to engage critically with the history and evolving vitality of public and socially engaged art while strengthening and expanding their own work.
The 2026/27 call for Fellowship applications is now open! The deadline to apply is April 9th, 2026.
Commission
More Art’s Engaging Artists Commission is an opportunity for early career artists focused on the incubation and commissioning of a public art project and carries an $8000 award to realize the project, plus curatorial, conceptual, budgetary, and logistical mentorship. The infrastructure and laboratory provided by More Art allow one selected early career and underrepresented artist (or collective) to gain a deeper understanding of the history and vitality of public and socially engaged art.
The 2026/27 call for Commission applications is now open! The deadline to apply is April 9th, 2026.
2025/26 Commission: Danielle Jagelski
Danielle Olana Jagelski, photo by Dark Listed Photography.
Danielle Jagelski is a composer, conductor, and creative producer, and the Artistic Director and Co-founder of Renegade Opera.
Described by I Care If You Listen as “a prime example of socially responsive artistry in the 21st century,” her work has been presented nationwide at venues including Roulette Intermedium, the National Gallery of Art, and Performance Space New York.
An enrolled citizen of the Oneida Nation of Wisconsin and Red Cliff Band of Ojibwe, Danielle centers collaboration with Indigenous artists and is deeply committed to kinship building and decolonial practice. She also serves as a consultant on equitable producing, working with institutions such as NYU, University of Portland, Handel and Haydn Society, and First Nations Performing Arts.
As a conductor, she is recognized for her work in contemporary repertoire by the National Opera Association with engagements including projects with International Contemporary Ensemble, Beth Morrison Projects, Harlem Opera Theatre, Voices of Ascension, and Anchorage Opera, among others.
Her recent commissions and upcoming commissions include Portland Opera, American Composers Forum, ChamberQUEER, Voices of Ascension, and New Native Theatre. Danielle is a recipient of the 2026 Opera America Discovery Grant, a First Peoples Fund Performing Arts Fellowship, More Art Engaging Artists Commission, and additional support from organizations including the Native Arts and Cultures Foundation and Opera America.
Click here to learn more about Danielle’s practice, and explore her work at daniellejagelski.com. Stay tuned for more information about the 2025/26 Commission project!
2025/26 Engaging Artist Fellows
Meet our current cohort of Engaging Artists Fellows, who will be cultivating their socially engaged art practices through artist & organizer talks, practical workshops, guided reflection, and one-on-one support from More Art staff from September 2025 through July 2026.
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Huiyi Chen
Huiyi Chen (she/her) is an artist, researcher, writer, and educator working across moving images, performance, and digital technology.
Intelligent Mischief
INTELLIGENT MISCHIEF is a creative studio and cultural futures lab that creates public art and social dream spaces that offer the necessary space and time needed to unleash Black imagination to shape the future.
orion
orion (they/them) is a multidisciplinary artist, educator, and organizer based in New York.
Isabella Vargas
Isabella Vargas (she/they) is a multimedia artist who works at the intersection of media and activism.
Naya Lee Chang
Naya Lee Chang (she/her) is an NYC-based public artist who remixes the built environment with site-specific sculptures that visually riff on existing architecture or infrastructure, and conceptually uncover stories from a place’s real or imagined past.
Brandon Shaw McKnight
Brandon Shaw McKnight (he/her/they) is an incredible multi-hyphenate artist—director, singer, choreographer, performer, and teaching artist—whose work fuses opera, theatre, dance, sacred music, and visual art into transformative, boundary-breaking experiences.
asmara
Guided by Black Feminist Insurgency, asmara (she/they) is dedicated to the reality that freedom is a place we can build and arrive at in this lifetime.
Engaging Artists Projects
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2024/25 Fellowship Showcase
By Multiple Artists - 2024/25 Fellowship
(2025) More Art's 2024/25 Engaging Artist Fellows share their practices, cultivated research findings, and transformative routines.
Opening & Performance: Xenoduo’s A Mobile Home
By Xenoduo
More Art's 2024 Engaging Artists Commission, A Mobile Home by creative collective Xenoduo, opens Saturday, September 14th from 1-3pm at Sunset Park.
A Mobile Home
By Xenoduo
(2024) A mobile installation resembling an emergency shelter tent, serving as both a public sculpture and an immersive performance stage.
Rituals of Social Transformation
By Multiple Artists - Rituals of Social Transformation
(2024) More Art's 2023 Engaging Artist Fellows share their practices, cultivated research findings, and transformative routines.
Beyond Memorial
By Immanuel Oni
(2023) An art, design and healing justice response to the invisible scars left in community spaces after gun violence and loss.
Networks of Collective Care
By Multiple Artists - Networks of Collective Care
(2023) A showcase of the work of More Art’s 2022 Engaging Artists Fellows.
The Red String
By Lily & Honglei
(2022) An Augmented Reality (AR) art installation designed for multiple public parks in Asian American neighborhoods.
Futures, Narratives, and Networks
By Multiple Artists - Futures Narratives, and Networks
(2022) More Art's recent Fellows shared their work as socially engaged artists through a series of workshops, performances, and conversations.
Beam Ensemble
By Sean Desiree
(2021) An outdoor orchestra intended to give orchestral music back to the people by providing a resource for composition.
Trans Boxing
By Nolan Hanson
An ongoing co-authored art project in the form of a boxing club that centers the participation of trans and gender variant people.
Waiting for the session to begin
By Bryan Rodriguez Cambana
A public sculpture and sound installation by Bryan Rodriguez Cambana at Coney Island Boardwalk.
Building Stories
By Multiple Artists - Building Stories
Building Stories is an exhibition of works by More Art’s 2016 Engaging Artists Fellowship focused on housing justice.
Hello, it’s me
By Hidemi Takagi
Collaborative multimedia project highlighting the stories of senior residents of the city.
Almost Home / Casi Llegando a Casa
By Bridget Bartolini & Priscila Stadler
A series highlighting the struggles and victories of community organizing against gentrification and displacement.
Funeral Portrait Service (Young Jeong Sajin)
By Soi Park
Soi Park addresses the South Korean cultural practice of preparing memorial portraits of the elderly while the individual is still alive.
Engaging Artists at the Queens Museum
By Multiple Artists - Engaging Artists at Queens Museum
An exhibition featuring the work of first generation and foreign born artists who participated in the Engaging Artists program.
REMAP
By Anna Adler, Corinne Cappelletti, & Julia Rooney
A collaborative project involving meditation, recipe sharing, and map-making with current & formerly unhoused community groups.
Engaging Artists Readings
Engaging Artists
Another World is Possible with Gong Fu Cha Practice
An essay by Mei Ling Yu who writes about the significance of Gong Fu Cha practice and how it can guide us in building a new reality based on connection and collectivity.
Engaging Artists
Danielle Cowan: In Conversation
This month’s featured Fellow is Danielle Cowan, who joined our Fellowship Leader, Sarah Esmi in a conversation on the joy of sharing, creativity for sleeplessness, and reclaiming your neighborhood.
Engaging Artists
Two Subtle Bodies
More Art 2022 Fellow Yeseul Song discusses her experiential artwork, Two Subtle Bodies, ahead of Gates, Borders, Barriers, an activation of Fred Wilson’s public art project.
Readings
Andrew Freiband: Rethinking Systems, Reaffirming Artists’ Insights
“Art is not the production of artworks; art is research. And if we view art as research, we recognize the outcomes as our knowledge, and I’m interested in the kinds of knowledge that artists have unique access to.”
Readings
Mafe Izaguirre: Cross-Cultural Cybernetics
Mafe Izaguirre is an artist dedicated to the exploration of hybrid spirituality, intent on the belief that technology can help us to understand and extend human nature. “In other words, what I’m trying to do is extend my spirit using technology,” she says. “Through my machines, I establish a dialogue with the subtle body — my soul, and yours. I am looking for the poetry within the interaction between humans and machines, the echoes, and their resonance.”
Readings
Yemisi Juliana Luna: Changing Perspective Via the Power of the Moon
An interview with Yemisi Juliana Luna—“I really live in a constant state of trust. I ask to be surprised all the time.”
Engaging Artists
Althea Rao: Adapting Art and Performance During the Pandemic
“I can think really beyond what I am capable of doing, and I can propose ideas, and within the limited amount of time and resources I have, my collaborators can help me realize them.”
Engaging Artists
Towards networks of collective care in the street. / Hacía redes de cuidado colectivo en la calle.
María Bonomi and Lucía Cozzi examine the power of collective art making in fostering community care.