Artist Award Roundup: Preis der Nationalgalerie Goes to Four Artists, Sobey Art Award Reveals Long List, and More

The Preis der Nationalgalerie 2024, which is administered by Berlin’s Nationalgalerie and awarded every two years, will for the first time go to four artists. The winners are Pan Daijing, Daniel Lie, Hanne Lippard,and James Richards, who will each produce a new work that will go on view at Berlin’s Hamburger Bahnhof in April. The jury consisted of directors of four collecting institutions: Cecilia Alemani, Elvira Dyangani Ose, Kasia Redzisz, and Jochen Volz, alongside representatives from the Hamburger Bahnhof.

“The new format of the award takes up the idea of ​​the exhibition as a collective exchange and aims to expand the collection through the purchase of the four new productions,” the museum said in a statement.

The National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa and the Sobey Art Foundation have announced the long list for the annual Sobey Art Award, which comes with $100,000. The long list is divided into five regional categories—Atlantic, Quebec, Ontario, Prairies & North, and West Coast & Yukon—with five artists in each. Among the 25 selected artists are Alan Syliboy, Barry Ace, Michèle Pearson Clarke, Wally Dion, Marigold Santos, Justine A. Chambers, and Gabrielle L’Hirondelle Hill. The short list will be announced in June, with a winner chosen in November. The full list can be accessed on the NGC’s website.

The inaugural K21 Global Art Award, which was established by the Friends of K20K21 in cooperation with Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, has gone to South African interdisciplinary artist Senzeni Mthwakazi Marasela. Friends of K20K21 has acquired work by the artist totaling 70,000 euros, which will go on permanent loan to the Kunstsammlung.

In a statement, K20K21 director Susanne Gaensheimer said, “Marasela is an artist and a feminist who has achieved so much to give a voice and a visibility to the life and struggles of women living in post-apartheid South Africa. Her work is not only about women and not only about specitic context of South Africa—it captures the emotions and the experiences of something far greater and far more universal.”

From left, Theaster Gates, Edmund de Waal, and Hanya Yanagihara.

The Isamu Noguchi Foundation and Garden Museum in New York has named the three winners of its 10th annual Isamu Noguchi Award. They are artist Theaster Gates, artist and writer Edmund de Waal, and novelist and T: The New York Times Style Magazine editor-in-chief Hanya Yanagihara.

In a statement, Noguchi Museum director Brett Littman said, “The goal of our museum and this Award is to continue to expand the legacy, philosophy, aesthetics, and values of our founder Isamu Noguchi, and these creative artists do just that. All are deeply influenced by Noguchi and exemplify the integration of art, life, and the world around us to create works in a multitude of mediums that make our understanding of our past, present, and future more nuanced and enhanced.”

The arts nonprofit Artadia recently announced the three winners of its 2023 awards for Chicago-based artists, which this year are underwritten by several foundations. The winners are SaraNoa Mark (as the LeRoy Neiman and Janet Byrne Neiman Foundation Artadia Award recipient), Nyeema Morgan (The Joyce Foundation Artadia Award recipient), and Julia Phillips (The Pritzker Pucker Family Foundation Artadia Award recipient). Additional support for this cycle was provided by the Walder Foundation.

Jessica Vaughn.

Next month at Frieze New York, artist Jessica Vaughn will present a commissioned artwork as the inaugural winner of the Frieze Artadia Prize. Titled The Internet of Things, the work “draws on the US postal system to spotlight the organizational structures that underlie late-stage capitalism. In a process that began during the pandemic and lasted until earlier this year, Vaughn mailed letters via the US Postal Service to a series of locations, each marking a site of leisure, commerce, or an act of public violence,” according to a release.  

The Orlando Museum of Art has announced the 10 artists who will participate in the annual Florida Prize in Contemporary Art, which comes with $20,000. The selected artists, who will present their work in a group exhibition, are Cara Despain, Miami; Elliot and Erick Jiménez, Miami; Akiko Kotani, Gulfport; Peggy Levison Nolan, Hollywood; Yosnier Miranda, Tampa; Reginald O’Neal, Miami; Amy Schissel, Miami; Magnus Sodamin, Miami; MJ Torrecampo, Orlando; and Denise Treizman, Miami.

The 2023 Scotiabank New Generation Photography Award, which is presented by Scotiabank and the National Gallery of Canada, has gone to three lens-based artists: Hannah Doucet, Wynne Neilly, and Gonzalo Reyes Rodriguez. They will each receive $10,000. In a statement, NGC senior curator for photography Andrea Kunard said the winners “explore the many challenges in contemporary representations of the body, identity, culture, and history. … As much as their images operate as critical statements on contemporary life, they also function to open dialogue and create community.”

Clockwise from top left: Jaiquan Fayson, Beverly Price, Gary Harrell, Michael Fischer, Adamu Chan, and Jeremy Lee MacKenzie.

Fellowships

Right of Return USA, which was founded in 2017 by artists Jesse Krimes and Russell Craig, has named its 2023 fellows, who will each receive a grant of $20,000 “to support artistic projects focused on transforming our criminal legal and immigration systems and combatting mass incarceration.” The six winners are Adamu Chan, Jaiquan Fayson, Michael Fischer, Gary Harrell, Jeremy Lee MacKenzie, and Beverly Price.

The New York–based arts nonprofit Center for Art, Research and Alliances (CARA) has named the winners of its inaugural fellowships, which are “designed to support and sustain mid-to-late career artists and honor artists’ legacies,” according to a release. The two winners are New York–based E’wao “Rocky” Kagoshima and San Juan–based Beatriz Santiago Muñoz. Funded by the Karsh Family Foundation, with support from United States Artists, the two winners will each receive an unrestricted grant of $75,000.

“CARA is dedicated to amplifying the many perspectives that make up the arts, and through this fellowship, we hope to further our commitment to accommodating artists’ voiced needs,” CARA’s founder Jane Hait and executive director Manuela Moscoso said in a joint statement. “Since our founding, we have endeavored to create an organization driven by cultural workers, artists, curators, and thinkers.”

The Oakland-based Kenneth Rainin Foundation has awarded its 2023 fellowships to three artists and one collective based in the Bay Area. The winners are Mohammad Gorjestani for film, Joanna Haigood for dance, Related Tactics for public space, and Sean San José for theater. Each fellow will receive an unrestricted grant of $100,000. In a statement, Ted Russell, the foundation’s director of arts strategy & ventures, said the fellows’ “boundary-pushing creative practices, performances, plays, films, and writings illuminate and further enrich the longstanding history of cultural experimentation and innovation in the Bay Area.”

The Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowships for New Americans has named its 25th class of graduate student fellows, who were selected from a pool of nearly 2,000 applicants. The merit-based program is awarded annually to students who are immigrants or children of immigrants as they pursue graduate degrees; each fellow can receive up to $90,000 for their studies. Among the 30 selected is Yehimi Cambrón Álvarez, who will pursue an MFA in print media at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Cambrón Álvarez was born in Michoacán, Mexico, and when she was seven years old, her family immigrated to Atlanta, where she is still based and has painted several murals. She is the first openly undocumented artist to exhibit at the city’s High Museum of Art.

“Being an undocumented immigrant with DACA, especially in the South, means growing up cultivating unwavering resilience,” Cambrón Alavarez said in a statement. “My parents’ sacrifices and dreams for my future carried me here, and their example of service to others inspires how I want to show up as a leader in my work. Being an Undocumented American also means navigating the bittersweet reality of recreating a home for yourself within a system that refuses to recognize you on paper. … Through my work, I share my lived experience with the hope of helping shape a more nuanced and humanizing narrative about immigrants in America.”

Open Calls and Jury Announcements

The Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowships have also announced that applications for 2024–25 academic year are now open, with an October 2023 deadline. Eligible applicants must be under 30 at the time of applying and are open to “green card holders, naturalized citizens, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival (DACA) recipients, individuals born abroad who graduated from both high school and college in the United States, and the US-born children of two immigrants,” according to a release.

The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco has announced that it will once again stage the de Young Open, after its initial debut in 2020, which exhibited 800 works from nearly 12,000 submissions. The exhibition, which has been turned into a triennial, is “the only exhibition of its kind at a major American museum, inviting submissions from local artists via open call for review by a jury composed of both Bay Area artists and Fine Arts Museums’ curators,” according to a release. The four artists serving on the jury are Clare Rojas, Stephanie Syjuco, Sunny A. Smith, and Xiaoze Xie, and the curatorial jury will consist of eight of the museum’s curators, led by senior curator Timothy Anglin Burgard, who originated the 2020 exhibition.

The Uruguay-based Fundación Ama Amoedo has announced an open call for 10 grants of $10,000 each in the following categories: artists (four grants), art and social engagement (two grants), organizations (two grants), and publications (two grants). Applicants should have “a significant connection with Latin America, either by nationality, cultural heritage and/or the site where the project will be carried out,” according to a release. This year’s jury consists of curators Sonia Becce, Marina Reyes Franco, and Yudi Rafael, along with the foundation’s director, Verónica Flom. Interested parties have until May 15 to apply and can do so on the foundation’s website.