In partnership with
+
An enduring institution honoring the Black innovators whose ideas expand what humanity is capable of imagining, building, and becoming.
Convened annually at the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum. Inaugural class consecrated in the spring of 2027.
The world's largest museum, education, and research complex lends its authority to a single prize.
Founded in 1846, the Smithsonian Institution has spent nearly two centuries preserving the artifacts, artworks, and scientific specimens that tell the American story. Its mandate—to increase and diffuse knowledge—has shaped the nation's memory and set the standard for institutional excellence worldwide.
The Latimer Prize stands on that foundation. This is the second collaboration between the two museums: The first was “Making Home—Smithsonian Design Triennial” at Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum in NYC. Cooper Hewitt announced in 2024 that Making Home was “the first in the Triennial series to be presented in collaboration with the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C. It opened Nov. 2, 2024 and ran through Aug. 10, 2025.
From architecture and industrial design to fashion, technology, and the cultural practices that shape how we live, this partnership recognizes the architects, inventors, and visionaries whose work expands what humanity is capable of imagining and building.
For the increase and diffusion of knowledge among all people.
For four centuries, the most consequential Black innovators have shaped the modern world without the institutions their work deserved.
The Latimer Prize is an Afrofuturist rite. One evening, every June, where heritage and horizon meet. It extends the patient work of the Latimer Fellowship, which has spent years cultivating the architects of what comes next, and lifts that lineage into public view. A small body of laureates is named across the eight disciplines that build a civilization: sciences, letters, design, music, cinema, technology, social architecture, and the quiet practice of mentorship. Their names join a record written for the next century, where ancestral memory and future invention are held together at last.
One night at Cooper Hewitt. Candlelit. Unbroadcast. A single room of 240. The laureates speak. The Fellows are named. The Archive opens its next chapter. A long-form film follows in the autumn.
5:00 pm
60 min
Doors open at five. Guests, laureates, and Fellows gather over cocktails as a program of iconic musical performances, artists to be announced, unfolds through the Great Hall and out onto the terrace.
Location
Carnegie Mansion · Great Hall & Garden Terrace
6:00 pm
60 min
A seated dinner designed and hosted by Marcus Samuelsson, opened by a mini musical-theater program staged for the room, a short original prologue to the evening's ceremony.
Location
Conservatory · Seated Service
7:00 pm
120 min
Eight honorees, ten minutes each. Each laureate is consecrated in turn: a citation, a filmed portrait, and the laureate at the lectern. The Register is read by candlelight into the record.
Location
Candlelit Convocation Hall
9:00 pm
120 min
Following the ceremony, the evening continues with an open-air after party among the laureates, Fellows, and guests. An iconic DJ, to be announced, scores the night. In partnership with 
.
Location
Conservatory & Garden Terrace
7:00 pm, The Ceremony
A companion exhibition of the prize winners at the Cooper Hewitt and the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture.
“Genius, when honored properly, becomes infrastructure for the generations that follow.”
Draftsman to Bell. Inventor for Edison. His carbon filament gave the electric lamp its long life, and his precise drawings held Bell's telephone patent in court. The quiet engineer behind a century of light.
Read the Life →Reginald Hudlin and Jon Cropper, a small body of filmmakers, scientists, and institutional stewards.
Meet the Producers →