Professor william córdova Honored with Two Prestigious Awards

Adjunct Assistant Professor and Mentor of Visual Arts william córdova has been awarded a 2025 Trellis Art Fund Milestone Grant. The new grant provides a cohort of twelve working artists based in the US and Puerto Rico $100,000 each, distributed over two years.

The Milestone Grant, established in 2024, awards artists who have made outstanding contributions to their fields with the financial support needed to keep going. The grant is unrestricted, trusting artists to use the money as needed to sustain their practice. córdova is part of the second annual cohort.

"Trellis Art Fund provides a wonderful platform for opportunity, change and discourse in the visual arts," córdova said. "Creative individuals need platforms to challenge and develop their practice but also to reflect on social conditions."

Trellis Art Fund seeks to mitigate both the general inequities of society and the specific inequities of the art world in their selection process. Milestone Grants were awarded to artists ranging in age between thirty eight and eighty two. Four of the grants this year were reserved for artists who are caregivers to children, elders, or other family members in need. córdova is among those caregiver grantees.

“While this year’s grantees vary greatly in their career stage, many mentioned how meaningful the grant is, not only as a financial boost but as affirmation and encouragement during this challenging economic and cultural moment,” Trellis Art Fund director Emily Davidson told Artforum. “We’re excited to see how these funds, and being in community with one another, might impact these grantees over the next two years and beyond.” 

In addition to the funds, grantees will receive professional support such as career development assistance, workshops, and a retreat to upstate New York this fall. The retreat will give Milestone grant recipients the opportunity to build community with each other and the 2024 cohort of Stepping Stone grantees.

The Trellis Art Fund isn't córdova's only major achievement this year. córdova also received a 2025 Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship. He is one of fourteen international artists awarded residencies in Smithsonian institutions to perform research leading to the creation of new artwork. 

córdova will take his residency at the National Museum of the American Indian, where he will use American Indian newspapers and other artifacts from the American Indian Movement (AIM) to "explore how abstraction and geometry appear as integral elements of Indigenous resistance and cultural expression," according to Smithsonian. "He will examine how forms of abstraction, ritual and protest continue to resonate today."

"[The] Smithsonian Fellowship is essential for rigorous scholars and practitioners whose work is deeply rooted in elevating scholarship and visual narratives," córdova said. "It's humbling to be nominated and selected for this wonderful opportunity."

william córdova was born in Lima, Peru, and now practices in Miami and New York City. He received his MFA from Yale University and his BFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He is an interdisciplinary cultural practitioner interested in the roots of abstraction, history of textile encoding and non-linear narratives. córdova illuminates the synthesis of memory, ritual and mythology to further disrupt, challenge and reassess definitions of our collective landscape.

córdova has exhibited internationally in venues such as the 50th Venice Biennial. Prague Triennial, 13th Havana Biennial, Whitney Biennial, Prospect III Triennial, and Site Santa Fe Biennial. He co-curated the Tulsa Greenwood Massacre Centennial in 2021, founded and co-curates the Florida AIM Biennial. Awards include, Smithsonian Fellowship, Trellis Art Fund (2025), Creative Capital Award (2024), Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship (2021), Art Matters Award (2020), Knight Arts Foundation Award (2022), Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant (2011). His recent exhibitions include, Avant-Garde and Liberation, Museum Modern Kunst, Vienna, Austria (2024) and 2 tienes santo pero no eres babalawo, Museo de Arte de Lima, Peru and Locust Projects, Miami, FL (2025). He has recently published The Odyssey of Byron Booth (2025), a biographical research project by NAME Publications and Stand Up Next 2 a Mountain: Unknown Story of Latin members of the Black Panther Party through a Creative Capital Grant (2026).