Stony Brook Faculty Selected as Climate Arts Residents at LMCC Arts Center on Governors Island

Two Stony Brook University faculty from the College of Arts and Sciences - Nobuho Nagasawaand Darla Migan- have been selected as part of the cohort of the 2026 Arts Center Residents at the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council's (LMCC) Arts Center at Governors Island.

The LMCC's Arts Center is the first permanent home for arts and culture on Governors Island - a home for working artists, an incubator for creative experimentation and a space for engagement and dialogue.

The 2026 Arts Center Residencyruns from March to October and fosters creative exploration for projects at the intersection of art and climate. The eight-month studio-based residency provides artists and practitioners in related fields with individual work space, a stipend for materials and access to two rehearsal studio facilities. Residents engage in ongoing dialogue with one another and participate in open studios and other LMCC programming. Residents' work engages the social, environmental and civic dimensions of our changing world as it relates to climate.

The 2026 cohort was selected through a closed nomination process and includes 18 artists. Nagasawa and Migan represent the program's first two Scholars-in-Residence from Stony Brook University, as part of a new partnership with LMCC. This partnership also connects Stony Brook students, faculty, staff and alumni to Governors Island events co-organized with both LMCC and the New York Climate Exchange, and with a special focus on Earth Week, City of Water Day and Climate Week NYC.

A professor in the College of Arts and Sciences Department of Art, Nagasawa specializes in sculpture, installation, public art and social sculpture practices. She is an interdisciplinary artist whose site-specific works explore the places, politics, ecology and psychological dimensions of space and people. Much of her work expresses her long-term interest in the environment, ecology and sustainability.

Migan is a full time lecturer in the College of Arts and Sciences Department of Philosophy, whose areas of specialization include aesthetics, ethics and critical philosophy of race. A philosopher, art critic and curator, Migan thinks about how judgment orients the possibility for the recognition and misrecognition of personhood in intercultural and intra-cultural communities.

"Understanding how our climate is changing and determining how we best protect against its impacts must involve creative professionals, social and natural scientists, and community organizers," said Carl W. Lejuez, executive vice president for academic affairs and provost at Stony Brook University. "Nobuho and Darla are deeply engaged with the physical and cultural impacts of climate change on individuals and communities, and I am so pleased that they have been selected to join the important conversations that LMCC is fostering and look forward to continuing to deepen the partnership between LMCC and Stony Brook."

"This is exactly the kind of partnership we need right now. It brings together LMCC's platform for artistic practice and public engagement with Stony Brook's leadership in climate," said Moe Yousuf, president and CEO of LMCC. "At LMCC, we create space for ideas to take shape and engage the public, and Stony Brook brings deep expertise and a body of work in climate that can really live and resonate in that kind of setting.

"This opens up real opportunities for artists, faculty, students, and the public to be in dialogue, to share knowledge, and to learn from each other," he continued. "That's how you start to build something more connected and more meaningful than any one piece on its own."

"As Stony Brook's seventh president, Andrea Goldsmith, reminds us, our impact stretches from Manhattan to Montauk," said Janet Ward, associate provost for arts, humanities, and social sciences initiatives. "Our faculty's research and creative practice extends its impact further via productive partnerships with New York City's superb arts organizations like the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council. LMCC's bold and innovative presence in transdisciplinary climate arts is a perfect partner for our vibrant, pacesetting university and consortial leadership role in the New York Climate Exchange. We are proud to have Darla Migan and Nobuho Nagasawa as our inaugural participants in the LMCC's highly prestigious Climate Arts Residency program."

Nagasawa has received major grants and awards, including DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service), the Rockefeller Foundation, the California Arts Council, multiple Japan Foundation grants and the SUNY Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Scholarship and Creative Activities. Among more than 40 completed public art commissions, she has earned three Design Excellence Awards.

"On Governors Island - where tidal currents, harbor winds, and rising waters converge - I approach the body as a sensor, participant, and witness within environmental systems," Nagasawa said in her artist's statement. "Through hand labor and immersive sculptural environments, I translate ecological phenomena and biological pulse - flowing water, birdsong, wind, breath, heartbeat, and voice - into responsive fields of light, vibration, and motion."

As a participant in the Arts Center Residency, Migan will study climate change through the lens of her current research on Black disinheritance to curate an exhibition on flourishing. Her independent curatorial practice takes up an interdisciplinary approach to creating aesthetic experiences, wherein to philosophize also means learning from artists. In her critical practice informed by the study of Black cultural formations and her training in academic philosophy, Migan is guided by an ongoing concern with the racialized conditions that construct the in/visibility of art and art worlds.

Migan is a recipient of the Helena Rubinstein Fellowship in Critical Studies at the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant and the Dorothea and Leo Rabkin Prize for her contributions to the field of arts journalism.

The first Open Studio event showcasing the 2026 Climate Arts Residents will be held on Saturday, April 18, from 12 pm to 5 pm, at the Arts Center on Governors Island. This event will also include a presentation by Joseph M. Pierce, inaugural director of Stony Brook University's Native American and Indigenous Studies initiative and professor in the College of Arts and Sciences Department of Hispanic Languages and Literature, on his new book, Speculative Relations: Indigenous Worlding and Repair.

A public reception will follow at 5 pm, co-hosted by LMCC, Stony Brook and NYCE, with music by The Jazz Loft. More information about the April 18 Open Studio and Earth Day Celebration can be found at this link.Subsequent Arts Center programming for the 2026 season will be announced by LMCC and SBU in the coming weeks. These events are free and open to the public.