Professor Juana Valdés has been named the recipient of the 2025–2026 HFA Mid-Career Faculty Research and Creative Activity Award at UMass Amherst. This recognition honors her sustained contributions as an artist, scholar, and educator, and acknowledges the distinguished body of work she has developed over the past years as an Associate Professor in the Art Department.
Valdés’s creative practice is grounded in sustained research into history, memory, migration, labor, and material culture. Working across sculpture, installation, photography, printmaking, ceramics, and public art, she produces projects that examine how materials, objects, and sites carry layered histories of colonialism, exchange, and displacement. Through exhibitions, public commissions, and interdisciplinary research, she has established a body of work that is both formally rigorous and historically engaged.
The award also recognizes the importance of creative activity as a vital form of scholarship within the university. At UMass Amherst, Professor Valdés has remained committed not only to advancing her own artistic practice, but also to fostering a rigorous learning environment in which students develop technical skill, critical awareness, and a deeper understanding of artistic practice as a mode of inquiry and knowledge production.
This recognition reflects Professor Valdés’s significant contributions to the intellectual and cultural life of the university. She receives the award with deep appreciation and with continued commitment to the work ahead.