Each year, the A.I.R. Fellowship Program supports the burgeoning careers of six emerging and underrepresented women and non-binary artists. Since 2024, the Louise H. McCagg Fellowship has been awarded annually to one A.I.R. Fellow in honor of artist, philanthropist, feminist, and mother Louise H. McCagg (1936–2020).

A member and supporter of A.I.R. Gallery since 1993, McCagg is remembered for her innovative work in sculpture, dynamic spirit, and lifelong commitment to feminist causes. Rooted in collaboration and community, her casts of faces and bodies in paper, plaster, and bronze have been exhibited widely, including as part of the Hungarian Pavilion at the 2009 Venice Biennale.

McCagg led a long, enriching life driven by her deep love of life itself. Born in 1936 in Hartford, Connecticut, McCagg’s interest in the arts led her to New York City to attend Barnard College, where she graduated in 1959 with a B.A. in English Literature while studying printing and painting at the Art Students League of New York. Moving to East Lansing, Michigan with her husband William Ogden McCagg, Jr., she raised their two daughters while earning an M.F.A. in Sculpture from Michigan State University, being the first woman in the department allowed to pour metal. Her husband’s scholarship in Eastern European history led the couple to live for extended periods in Europe, especially Hungary, which had a profound influence on McCagg’s work. In the early 1990s, the McCaggs returned to New York City and she joined A.I.R. Gallery as a member.

In her work, McCagg fused her interest in a formal, figurative sculptural aesthetic with her own experience and relationships, bringing together both rigorous artistic structure and intimate, personal experience. In the 1980s, she cast small-sized, aluminum sculptures that were used as a site of experimentation through which she could explore movements and positions of the body. During the 1990s, McCagg developed a unique paper casting process that allowed her to create “face prints” or “life masks” that, though reduced in size, retained the recognizable features of their sitter. Over decades, and around the world, she cast face masks of those important to her and synthesized them into larger visual works that told both a deeply personal, self-empowered narrative and, simultaneously, a larger, archetypal one: that we are all one, no matter who we are or where we come from.

Intellectually curious, always creating, ever courageous, Louise H. McCagg was herself a force of nature. She developed Parkinson’s Disease in her 60s. As the disease progressed, McCagg fought her body’s decline. Her endurance and refusal to stop working vividly demonstrated her deep love of life and evoked the provocative beauty of her life’s creations. With her wildly generous spirit and love of humanity, McCagg enriched the lives of hundreds of people, a legacy continued with the Louise H. McCagg Fellowship.

To learn more about Louise H. McCagg’s life and work, click here.

To learn more about the inaugural Louise H. McCagg Fellow Caroline Garcia, click here.