Three Artists Win SFMOMA's 2026 SECA Art Award

WHO:

The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) announces CrossLypka, Em Kettner and Chanell Stone as the recipients of the 2026 SECA Art Award. The awardees were selected by the exhibition’s co-curators following a portfolio review of over 140 nominees and studio visits with 16 finalists. The award honors Bay Area artists whose work has not, at the time of nomination, been accorded substantial recognition from a major institution. Biographies of the 2026 SECA Art Awardees are below.

WHEN:

The 2026 SECA Art Award exhibition will be presented December 12, 2026–May 30, 2027, in SFMOMA’s Art of California galleries on Floor 2. Each of the three artists will have a dedicated gallery.

CURATORS:

The 2026 SECA Art Award exhibition is curated by Alison Guh, assistant curator of painting and sculpture, and Delphine Sims, assistant curator of photography.

“SECA was founded over 60 years ago with the belief that encouraging our local arts community can profoundly impact both the future successes of emerging artists from the Bay Area and the broader contemporary art scene. This mission feels more urgent than ever in today’s changing arts landscape,” said Guh and Sims. “We are thrilled to continue this legacy with the 2026 awardees, whose intimate and inventive relationships with their materials inspire us to consider our interconnected existence.”

PUBLICATION:

The exhibition will be accompanied by a publication edited by Alison Guh and Delphine Sims that will include essays on the three 2026 SECA Art Award winners.

ABOUT SECA:

Since 1967, the SECA Art Award has honored more than 90 Bay Area artists with an exhibition at SFMOMA and an accompanying publication, supporting them at early stages in their careers. Recipients of the SECA Art Award are chosen by SFMOMA curators after a series of studio visits attended by members of SECA (the Society for the Encouragement of Contemporary Art).

ABOUT THE AWARD RECIPIENTS:

Life partners CrossLypka make both freestanding and wall-mounted sculptures which are direct byproducts of their life together in Northern California. Their work extends the sensuous line of the body over the rugged, coastal landscape of the Bay Area. Far from parochial, their work’s regional specificity leads to a kind of transcendental universalism. Underlying the formal quality of symmetry of what they produce, which often butterflies or doubles, is a reference to the process of cooperation and concession, the give and take of working with another.

CrossLypka is Tyler Cross (b. 1992, Lancaster, California) and Kyle Lypka (b. 1987, Philadelphia). The artists live and work in Oakland. CrossLypka’s work has been featured in solo exhibitions at Bureau, New York (2026); Chris Sharp Gallery, Los Angeles (2025); april april, Pittsburgh (2025); House of Seiko, San Francisco (2024); BlunkSpace, Point Reyes (2022); and pt.2 Gallery, Oakland (2020). Their work can be found in the collections of Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive and KADIST.

Em Kettner (b. 1988, Philadelphia) is an artist and writer based in Richmond, California. Her sculptures, tapestries, and drawings are about inter-abled and interdependent relationships. The miniature scale is a twist on votive objects, which traditionally served as offerings to ward off illness. In contrast, Kettner’s votives are impish and funny, and detail the ingenuity of people with disabilities.

Recent solo exhibitions include Rebecca Camacho Presents, San Francisco (2025); François Ghebaly Gallery, New York and Los Angeles (2024, 2022, 2021); Chapter, New York (2022); Specialist, Seattle (2022); and Goldfinch, Chicago (2020). Her work is in the permanent collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University, Palo Alto; the Ohana Center, Monterey; DePaul Art Museum, Chicago and The Joan Flasch Artists’ Book Collection, Chicago. In 2023, Fulcrum Arts produced her interactive digital storybook, “Doctor, Doctor,” an illustrated journey through history, myth and patienthood. Kettner earned her BFA from the University of the Arts in Philadelphia and an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She is represented by François Ghebaly Gallery.

Chanell Stone (b. 1992, Los Angeles) is an artist living and working in Oakland. Her practice examines the phenomenology of the female body as both a geographic site and physical material embedded within the American landscape. Grounded in the interdisciplinary frameworks of Black feminist thought and image-based media, Stone theorizes how memory and place are inscribed onto and throughout the body. Her inquiries take form through photography, poetry and material-based exploration, wherein she engages with lesser-known impressions of Black American presence and belonging.

Stone earned her MFA in Visual Arts from the University of California, San Diego, and her BFA in Photography from the California College of the Arts. Her work has been featured in The New York Times, NPR, FOAM and Aperture, as well as a solo presentation at the San Diego Museum of Art that opened in March 2026 and group exhibitions at the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh (2024); Esker Foundation, Alberta (2024); San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2022); Pier 24 Photography, San Francisco (2022); Museo Cabañas, Guadalajara (2021); and Fotografiska New York (2020).

2026 SECA Art Award Finalists:

Sholeh Asgary

Windy Chien

Soleé Darrell

Hughen/Starkweather

Xandra Ibarra

Charles H. Lee

Yameng Lee Thorp

Aspen Mays

Adia Millett

Lorena Molina

Tricia Rainwater

Livien Yin

Jes Young

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Images:

CrossLypka, a kneeling, 2026; photo: CrossLypka

Em Kettner, The Wheelchair, 2024; courtesy the artist and François Ghebaly Gallery, Los Angeles and New York and Outer Space, NH; photo: Morgan Karanasios

Chanell Stone, The body is but a record and rendition of the land, 2023; courtesy the artist

Photo by CrossLypka

Em Kettner; courtesy the artist

Chanell Stone; courtesy the artist