The High Museum of Art in Atlanta has given its 2023 David C. Driskell Prize to artist Ebony G. Patterson, who is based in Chicago and Kingston, Jamaica. Named for the legendary art historian, curator, and artist who mounted the watershed exhibition “Two Centuries of Black American Art: 1750–1955” in 1976, the $50,000 prize goes to “an early- or midcareer scholar or artist whose work makes an original and significant contribution to the field of African American art or art history,” according to a release.
Patterson is known for her monumental, baroque installations that gather together beads, fabric, children’s toys, archival images, and a lot more. Her work is included in the collections of major art institutions, including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Studio Museum in Harlem, the Pérez Art Museum Miami, the Whitney Museum in New York, the National Gallery of Jamaica, and the Speed Art Museum in Louisville, Kentucky. The High recently acquired her 2018 . . . they stood in a time of unknowing . . . for those who bear/bare witness after it was included in a group show there last year.
Patterson will be the subject of solo exhibitions at the New York Botanical Garden in the spring and at the Arnolfini Museum in Bristol in 2025. Her work is currently on view in “Forecast Form: Art in the Caribbean Diaspora, 1990s-Today” at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, which will then travel over the new two years. She was recently named the co–artistic director, alongside curator Miranda Lash, of the Prospect.6 triennial in 2024.
Past recipients of the Driskell Prize include artists Xaviera Simmons, Rashid Johnson, Lyle Ashton Harris, Mark Bradford, Amy Sherald, and Jamal D. Cryus, as well as curators Kellie Jones, Franklin Sirmans, Valerie Cassel Oliver, and Naima J. Keith.
In a statement, High Museum director Rand Suffolk said, “Patterson’s striking work commemorates the lives and struggles of marginalized people throughout the world. In doing so, she asks viewers to consider tough questions regarding social and racial inequality globally. We are honored to recognize her important practice and considerable contributions to African American art with the 2023 Driskell Prize.”
The New York–based nonprofit Creative Capital has named the 50 projects (by 66 artists) that will receive funding up to $50,000 for its 2023 “Wild Futures: Art, Culture, Impact” Awards, totaling more than $2.5 million in support. Grants are given in three categories—Technology, Performing Arts, and Literature—with an emphasis socially engaged and multidisciplinary projects. Though they are technically given on the basis of project proposals, the grants are unrestricted and can be used “for any purpose to advance the project, including, but not limited to, studio space, housing, groceries, staffing, childcare, equipment, computers, and travel,” according to a release.
Seventy-five percent of the winning artists are BIPOC; 59 percent are women, gender nonconforming, or nonbinary; and 10 percent are artists with disabilities. The artists range in age from 25 to 69 and are based across the United States, as well as Cambodia, Burkina Faso, Germany, and Japan. Among the artists who will receive funding in this round are Anicka Yi, Ron Athey, Xandra Ibarra, Kite, Pamela Sneed, and LIZN’BOW (Liz Ferrer and Bow Ty). The full list of awardees and further information of their projects can be accessed on Creative Capital’s website.
Courtesy the artist and Creative Capital
“The 2023 projects creatively, innovatively, and poetically deal with urgent issues shaping our world today, with a particular focus on the health of our bodies and the planet—from carbon offsetting and the sound of climate crisis, to calls for reparations and repair for Native communities, to robots and the pathos of automation, to insomnia, pharmaceutical intervention, and the interconnectedness of AIDS, COVID-19, and other pandemics,” Aliza Shvarts, Creative Capital’s director of artist initiatives, said in a statement.
El Museo del Barrio in New York has partnered with Maestro Tequila to create the biannual Maestro Dobel Latinx Art Prize, which is meant to “raise awareness and amplify the cultural production of Latinx artists, a segment that has historically been underrepresented in the artworld at large,” according to a release. The prize will come with $50,000 and the first winner will be announced in the fall. In a statement, El Museo’s executive director Patrick Charpenel said, “We are delighted to partner with Maestro Dobel on this important initiative that brings visibility to the incredible diversity of Latinx cultural production in the United States. El Museo del Barrio continues to lead the vital and much-needed conversations surrounding the importance of representation in the art world. We hope the Prize, will prompt, and encourage meaningful dialogue regarding Latinx art and its important role in the canon of American art.”
The Nairobi-based healthcare nonprofit Amref Health Africa will give its Rees Visionary Award to New York–based artist Julie Mehretu at its annual ArtBall event on February 25. The award is given to artists who are “creating exceptional work that educates, inspires, and emboldens the viewer through these challenging times,” according to a release, and past honorees include Wangechi Mutu, El Anatsui, Toyin Ojih Odutola, and Zanele Muholi.
Edra Soto is the winner of the 2022 Ree Kaneko Award, which is given by the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts in Omaha, Nebraska, in honor of the organization’s cofounder and first executive director. The prize comes with $25,000 and is given to an artist who has shown at the Bemis Center previously; Soto was included in the museum’s 2017–18 group exhibition “Monarchs: Brown and Native Contemporary Artists in the Path of the Butterfly.” Calling that presentation “a memorable highlight of my career,” Soto said in a statement, “What Bemis envisions and supports through their curatorial projects and residency program has propelled so many artistic careers at a national level throughout the years. I couldn’t be prouder of being the recipient of this prestigious award.”
Chosen via an open-call process, Dominique White is the winner of the 2022 Foundwork Artist Prize, which comes with $10,000 and a studio visit with each of the five jury members. Eva Langret, a jury member and director of Frieze London, said in a statement, “We were particularly taken with the formal sensibility of Dominique White’s work, and their engagement with complex ideas around myth, maritime history, and colonial past. We are delighted to award Dominique the Foundwork Prize this year, and would like to thank all participating artists, whose work we look forward to following in the months and years to come.”
The Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation has named the 20 artists who will receive its 2022 Biennial Grants, which come with an unrestricted purse of $20,000 to produce new work that will then be documented in a catalogue published in the spring. The grants are now administered by the National Academy of Design. Among the winners are Farah Al-Qasimi, Nikita Gale, Mark Thomas Gibson, Pao Her, Ronny Quevedo, and Didier William. The full list of winners of can be accessed on the foundation’s website.
The YoungArts Jorge M. Pérez Award, which comes with $25,000, has been given to Miami-based interdisciplinary artist and designer Cornelius Tulloch, who was a YoungArts award winner in 2016. In a statement, Tulloch said, “It’s one thing to have a creative voice and vision, but it is another to have that creative voice heard and that vision seen. YoungArts has done exactly that for me. To know that for almost a decade this organization has shown me how important my unique creativity is to the world and has given me the encouragement to continue sharing my gifts and talents.”
Fellowships
The Gordon Parks Foundation has named the three recipients of its 2023 fellowship recipients. They are Jammie Holmes and José Parlá, who will be artist fellows, and art historian and scholar Melanee C. Harvey, who is the Genevieve Young Fellow in Writing. Each recipient will receive $25,000. In a statement, the foundation’s executive director Peter W. Kunhardt, Jr., said, “This year’s art fellows are both painters whose work moves Gordon Parks’s legacy forward in important ways, while Melanee’s writing fellowship project at Howard University brings forth an important new historical context to his work.”
The San Francisco–based Fleishhacker Foundation has announced the 12 winners of its next three cycles (2023, 2024, and 2025) for its Eureka Fellowship Program, which comes with $35,000 for Bay Area artists “to continue living and creating art,” according to a release. Among the winning artists are Sadie Barnette (2024), Emory Douglas (2023), and Xandra Ibarra (2023). The full list of winners can be accessed on the Fleishhacker Foundation’s website.
Open Calls
NXTHVN, the closely watched residency program founded by Titus Kaphar and Jason Price in New Haven, Connecticut, is accepting applications for its Studio and Curatorial Fellows until February 27. Fellows receive studio or office space, a stipend, and subsidized housing, as well as a mentorship-driven curriculum that includes professional development sessions. Interested parties can apply on NXTHVN’s website.
The Native-led arts organization Forge Project in Mahicannituck River Valley, New York, is accepting applications for its 2023 fellowships from Indigenous artists, scholars, organizers, cultural workers, researchers, and educators to create a cohort of six Indigenous fellows; two will be awarded to members of the Stockbridge-Munsee Band of Mohican Indians, on which the ancestral lands Forge project is situated. Each fellow will receive $25,000, and the application deadline is February 15. More information can be found on Forge Project’s website and applications can be submitted via Submit Table.
The legendary New York nonprofit Franklin Furnace will accept applications for its FUND for Performance Art from February 1 to April 1. Initiated in 1985 with the Jerome Foundation, the grants are intended for early-career artists who will present a new work of performance art in New York City. An information session on the application process will be held on February 22, and interested applicants can apply via the Franklin Furnace website.
For its 13th season in Fire Island’s Cherry Grove, the Fire Island Artist Residency is accepting applications until April 15. The four-week residency is open to emerging visual artists who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, nonbinary, intersex, two spirit, or queer.