NEW BRITAIN, CONN.- The New Britain Museum of American Art announced it is the recipient of an FY 2026 Grants for Arts Projects award of $65,000 from the National Endowment for the Arts. This funding will support two exhibitions: John Hitchcock: We are Defined by the Beat and Architects of Being: Louise Nevelson and Esphyr Slobodkina.

“The National Endowment for the Arts is proud to support opportunities across the country for Americans to experience and participate in the arts while celebrating our nation’s history,” said Mary Anne Carter, chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts. “As we approach our country’s 250th anniversary, this is a moment to recognize the important role the arts continue to play in our lives, communities, and heritage.”

On the occasion of America’s 250th anniversary, the New Britain Museum of American Art, the nation’s oldest museum dedicated exclusively to American art, will present exhibitions and programs that illuminate the rich and varied contributions to our nation’s artistic heritage.

Since its founding, the Museum remains committed to telling the story of America through its art and culture. And while our permanent collection is strong in its historic holdings, the institution has a continued history of showcasing emerging and underrepresented artists in the Museum. This series continues this legacy by providing a unique platform for these artists and their stories.

“We are grateful to the National Endowment for the Arts for this generous grant,” said Executive Director and CEO Brett Abbott. “These exhibitions will showcase the enduring and evolving contributions of artists whose voices have shaped—and continue to shape—our nation's cultural heritage as we commemorate this landmark moment in our history.”

Funds from the National Endowment for the Arts will directly support the presentation of two key exhibitions in 2026, John Hitchcock: We are Defined by the Beat and Architects of Being: Louise Nevelson and Esphyr Slobodkina, each contributing to a broader understanding of American perspective.





John Hitchcock: We are Defined by the Beat (May 16, 2026–January 17, 2027) is the artist’s first mid-career retrospective. For over three decades, John Hitchcock (b. 1967) has transformed the sonic and cultural rhythms of his homeland into a distinct visual language. An enrolled member of the Kiowa Tribe of Oklahoma with Comanche and Northern European ancestry, Hitchcock merges personal expression with references to intertribal powwows, the Wichita Mountain landscape of his youth, and the symbols and languages of Great Plains Native populations. Working across printmaking, neon, textiles, sound, video, and installation, Hitchcock merges traditional and contemporary art forms to pay homage to his ancestors, confront histories of Indigenous displacement and trauma, and celebrate community, resilience, and survival.

John Hitchcock: We are Defined by the Beat is made possible by the National Endowment for the Arts with additional support provided by the Roberts Foundation for the Arts, Susan and John Alston, and Claudia I. Thesing.

Architects of Being: Louise Nevelson and Esphyr Slobodkina (July 30–November 1, 2026) celebrates the legacy of two female pioneers of abstract art. Born nine years apart, Nevelson and Slobodkina were both children of Jewish families who fled Russia to New York to study art in the 1920s. At a time when abstraction remained unfamiliar—and often controversial—to American audiences, both artists embraced a visual language of shapes, structures, rhythms, and materials rather than recognizable subjects or narratives. They arrived independently at remarkably similar artistic solutions, developing an architectural approach to abstraction that built compositions from repeated forms, assembled smaller units into larger structures, and treated space itself as an artistic material. Architects of Being brings together more than 80 works by these trailblazing artists, including paintings, sculpture, assemblage, garments, textiles, jewelry, design and more. Seen side by side, these artists emerge as uncannily parallel figures—similar in experience and ambition, yet original in the worlds they built for themselves and for American abstraction.

Architects of Being: Louise Nevelson and Esphyr Slobodkina is organized by the Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts and is accompanied by a scholarly illustrated catalogue published by University of Arkansas Press.