Announcing 2026 Fitch Fellows and Talbert Prize Recipient!
The Trustees of the Fitch Foundation are delighted to announce the recipients of the 2026 grant cycle, including the James Marston Fitch Mid-Career Fellowship, Robert Silman Award, and the second Talbert Prize for Heritage Justice. Read on for brief information on these four practitioners in preservation.
Fellows’ Reception: Tuesday, July 14th, 2026 6:30 pm New York City
Save the date for the Fitch Foundation’s annual reception to congratulate the newest class of Fellows. We invite you to join Trustees, Fitch Fellows past and present, and colleagues to learn about our newest Fellows’ intriguing areas of study. All are welcome; advance RSVP required. More details to come.
James Marston Fitch Mid-Career Fellowship
Richard McCoy (Columbus, IN)
Preservation in Public: Art, Design, and the Making of Civic Belonging
Nakita Reed (Bethesda, MD)
Navigating Historic Preservation Approvals for Climate Adaptation
Robert Silman Award
Lara Davis (Foster, RI)
Swamp and Stone: The Master Shapers of Foster’s Historic Wetlands
Talbert Prize for Heritage Justice
Joe Baker (Bartlesville, OK / New York, NY)
Mr. Baker is the second recipient of the Talbert Prize, following Tonika Lewis Johnson. Joe Baker is an artist, curator, and culture bearer who has been working in the field of Native Arts for the past thirty years. Spanning multiple mediums, his work seeks to preserve and elevate Lenapehoking community, culture, and arts through leadership of the Lenape Center, based in New York, and his own artistic practice.
The Talbert Prize supports the creative potential of an innovative practitioner whose track record demonstrates special promise to expand traditional notions of preservation and cultural heritage through their innovative work. Joe Baker’s multidisciplinary approach, combining Native Arts, a curatorial point of view, and the forging of public/private partnerships has brought elevated prominence to Lenape heritage in New York and beyond. Mr. Baker’s approach to “place” takes on added significance, and urgency, in the context of the Lenape diaspora, offering a model for illuminating at-times abstract or intangible elements of cultural heritage preservation.
Read more about Joe Baker and the Fitch Foundation’s Talbert Prize here.