2026 Summer GRANTEES

Visual Grantee - Ronald Hall

The Café Royal Cultural Foundation NYC has awarded a Visual Grant to artist Ronald Hall for his upcoming exhibition, Through The Veil. Slated for late 2027 at McBride Dillman Gallery in New York City, the project brings together contemporary figurative painting and interactive video installations to examine African American history through the lenses of surrealism and digital culture.

Music Grantee - Nicola Caminiti

The Café Royal Cultural Foundation NYC has awarded a Music Production Grant to saxophonist, composer, and arranger Nicola Caminiti for his upcoming project, Side Quest. Centered on original compositions for quintet featuring guitar, keys, electric bass, and drums, Side Quest investigates the formative secondary influences—from metal and contemporary classical to modern jazz—that shape an artist’s musical identity. Finding a natural convergence between complex rhythm, adventurous harmony, and collective improvisation, the project bridges the technical discipline of modern jazz with the raw intensity and experimental spirit of artists.

Literature Grantee - Henne Lena Van Campen

The Café Royal Cultural Foundation NYC has awarded a grant to Staten Island-based writer and multidisciplinary artist Henne Lena Van Campen for her experimental novella, Guadalhorce Leaves Bayonne Forever. Taking its title from a painting by John A. Noble, the work explores how shifting industrial landscapes and physical space shape human language. Set against the waterways of the steamship era, the story charts the life of orphan dockworker Anibal Guadalhorce as he navigates multilingual maritime communities, voyages as a translator, and confronts isolation at sea when narrative prose dissolves into visual poetry.

Performance Grantee - Mary Prescott

The Café Royal Cultural Foundation NYC has awarded a Performance Grant to Thai-American interdisciplinary artist, composer, and performer Mary Prescott for her upcoming production, Ancestral Table. An evening-length solo performance paired with a 5-course communal meal, Ancestral Table examines the deep intersections of ecology, migration, cultural inheritance, and maternal legacy through Prescott’s Thai mother’s family recipes. Blending original music, text, film, and shared cuisine, the work immerses audiences in the living memories and migrations of her maternal Asian ancestors. Ancestral Table will premiere at Roulette Intermedium in Brooklyn, NY on January 15 and 16, 2027.