Dallas, Texas (April 2, 2015) – The Nasher Sculpture Center today announced the creation of the Nasher Prize for sculpture, an annual international award that will be presented to a living artist in recognition of a significant body of work that has had an extraordinary impact on the understanding of the art form. The inaugural winner will be announced in fall of 2015, and will receive the award, which includes a $100,000 prize, on April 2, 2016 in Dallas, Texas.
The Nasher Sculpture Center is one of a few institutions worldwide dedicated exclusively to the exhibition and study of modern and contemporary sculpture. As such, the prize is an apt extension of the museum’s mission and its commitment to advancing developments in the field. By recognizing those artists who have had a significant impact on the understanding and development of sculpture, the Nasher Sculpture Center will further its role as a leading institution in enhancing and promoting this vital art form.
"Today sculpture stands at the center of public discussion and debate, even as it remains a source of profound private experience" said Nasher Sculpture Center Director Jeremy Strick. "This is truly an exceptional moment for sculpture, and an international prize recognizing outstanding contributions to the field can bring focus and depth to the conversation, highlighting the achievements of the most important artists of our time, and adding to the understanding of the significance of their work. The Nasher Sculpture Center is especially well-positioned to inaugurate this award, and we are delighted to embrace this important new role."
An international jury of renowned museum directors, curators, artists, and art historians who have an expertise in the field, and varying perspectives on the subject, will select the inaugural Nasher Prize winner, including: Phyllida Barlow, artist; Lynne Cooke, Senior Curator of Special Projects in Modern Art, National Gallery of Art; Okwui Enwezor, Director, Haus der Kunst; Yuko Hasegawa, Chief Curator of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo (MOT); Steven Nash, founding Director of the Nasher Sculpture Center and Director Emeritus of the Palm Springs Art Museum; Alexander Potts, art historian; and Sir Nicholas Serota, Director, Tate. The jury will evaluate nominations submitted by a larger group of their peers in a process moderated by Nasher Director Jeremy Strick.
"In recent decades, the very definition of sculpture has evolved and broadened. A prize that focuses attention on the current state of the field is an exciting proposition," said Nicholas Serota. "I am delighted to be a member of this prestigious jury and look forward to a dynamic conversation as we go through the process of selecting the first winner of the Nasher Prize."
The Nasher is developing a series of public programs and educational opportunities tied to the Nasher Prize, including public lectures, symposia and family programs designed to further extend the broader appreciation of sculpture.
About the Inaugural Nasher Prize Jury
Phyllida Barlow, Artist
Phyllida Barlow was born in 1944 in Newcastle upon Tyne, England, and currently lives and works in London. In the late 1960s, Barlow began teaching at the Slade School of Fine Art as Professor of Fine Art where she instructed such notable artists as Rachel Whiteread, Tacita Dean, and Douglas Gordon. In 2009, she retired from teaching in order to focus on her own work, and was later selected a Royal Academician in 2011.
Since retiring from teaching, Barlow has mounted a number of highly acclaimed, daring exhibitions of monumental sculpture. Her recent solo exhibition dock, a Duveen Commission at TATE Britain in London (2014), was called “in every way tremendous” by critic Adrian Searle of The Guardian. Other solo exhibitions include: HOARD, Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach, FL.; Scree, Des Moines Art Center, Des Moines, IA (2013); Phyllida Barlow: siege at the New Museum, New York, NY (2012); BRINK, Ludwig Forum, Aachen, Germany (2012); Phyllida Barlow: Bad Copies, Henry Moore Institute, Leeds, England (2012); Cast, Kunstverein Nürnberg, Nuremberg, Germany (2011); STREET, BAWAG Contemporary, Vienna, Austria (2010); and in 2010 she was in the critically acclaimed two-person show at the Serpentine Gallery, London, England with Nairy Baghramian. Recent group shows include 2013 Carnegie International, Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, PA (2013); Venice Biennale, 55th International Art Exhibition: The Encyclopedic Palace, Venice, Italy (2013); The Best of Times, The Worst of Times – Rebirth and Apocalypse in Contemporary Art, The First International Kiev Biennale, Kiev, Ukraine (2012); Sculptural Acts, Haus der Kunst, Munich, Germany (2011); Displaced Fractures, Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Zurich, Switzerland (2010).
In 2012, Barlow received the Aachen Art Prize and the “Award for the Most Significant Contribution to the Development of Contemporary Art” at The First International Kiev Biennale, Kiev, Ukraine.
This year, Barlow will unveil new work in solo exhibitions at the Nasher Sculpture Center, opening in May 2015, and at the Fruitmarket Gallery in Edinburgh in July 2015.
Lynne Cooke, Senior Curator, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Australian native Lynne Cooke is Senior Curator of Special Projects in Modern Art at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., where she has been since August of 2014 following a two-year teaching and research position as the Andrew W. Mellon Professor at the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts (CASVA) at the National Gallery.
Prior to the NGA, Cooke was the Deputy Director and Chief Curator of the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid where she mounted solo exhibitions of numerous highly influential artists, including Cristina Iglesias: Metonymy (2013); Alighiero Boetti: Game Plan (2012); James Castle: Show and Store (2011); and the lauded Rosemarie Trockel: A Cosmos, which traveled from Madrid to the New Museum, New York and then the Serpentine Gallery, London (2012-2013).
Cooke has also served as Curator for the New York-based Dia Art Foundation from 1991 to 2008, where she organized such shows as Bridget Riley: Reconnaissance (2001), Richard Serra: Torqued Ellipses (1998), and Andy Warhol: The Last Supper Paintings (1995); Artistic Director of the 10th Biennale of Sydney (1994-96); and Co-Curator of the 1991 Carnegie International at Pittsburgh's Carnegie Museum of Art. A former lecturer in the history of art at the University College London, she has served as staff at numerous academic institutions including Yale University in New Haven, CT; Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY; and the Malmö Art Academy in Malmö, Sweden. Cooke has also filled many editorial roles, at such esteemed publications as The Burlington Magazine, London (1988-present); Flash Art (1985-1986); and Artscribe (1985), as well providing critical commentary for such exhibition catalogues as Judith Scott: Bound and Unbound, Brooklyn Museum of Art, Brooklyn (2014) and “Great and Mighty Things”: Outsider Art from the Jill and Sheldon Bonovitz Collection, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia (2013). She has also been a member of the esteemed Turner Prize Committee, Tate Gallery, London (1985).
Okwui Enwezor, Director, Haus der Kunst
Okwui Enwezor is a curator, art critic, editor, and writer. Since 2011 he has been the Director of the Haus der Kunst in Munich. He is Curator of the 56th International Art Exhibition at this year’s Venice Biennale and previously served as Artistic Director of the 2nd Johannesburg Biennale, South Africa (1996-1998); Documenta 11, Kassel, Germany (1998-2002); the Bienal Internacional de Arte Contemporáneo de Sevilla, Spain (2005-2007); the 7th Gwangju Biennale, South Korea (2008); and the Triennal d’Art Contemporain of Paris, Palais de Tokyo (2012). Enwezor’s practice spans international exhibitions, museums, academia, and publishing. His research includes video and photography, archives theory, photographic documentation, photojournalism, and museums history. He also studies theories on diasporas and migrations of post-colonial modernism, and the architecture and urbanism of post-colonial African cities.
In 1994 he founded Nka: Journal of Contemporary African Art, published by Duke University Press. As a writer, critic, and editor, he has been a regular contributor to exhibition catalogues, anthologies, and journals. He has authored many books, including: Archive Fever: Uses of the Document in Contemporary Art (Gottingen: Steidl and New York: International Center of Photography, 2008); Contemporary African Art Since 1980 (Damiani, 2009, with Chika Okeke-Agulu); Antinomies of Art and Culture: Modernity, Postmodernity, Contemporaneity (Duke University Press, 2008, with Terry Smith and Nancy Condee); and James Casebere: Works, 1975-2010 (Damiani, 2011).
Enwezor has also served in numerous academic positions including Dean of Academic Affairs and Senior Vice President of the San Francisco Art Institute; Visiting Professor at the Department of Art History and Archaeology, Columbia University, New York; and as the Kirk Varnedoe Visiting Professor in Art History, the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University.
His exhibitions include: ECM: A Cultural Archaeology, Haus der Kunst, Munich; Rise and Fall of Apartheid: Photography and the Bureaucracy of Everyday Life, International Center of Photography, New York; The Short Century: Independence and Liberation Movements in Africa, 1945-1994, Museum Villa Stuck, Munich; Century City, Tate Modern, London; Mirror’s Edge, Bildmuseet, Umea; In/Sight: African Photographers, 1940-Present, Guggenheim Museum; and Stan Douglas: Le Detroit, Art Institute of Chicago.
Yuko Hasegawa, Chief Curator of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo (MOT)
Yuko Hasegawa is Chief Curator of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo (MOT) and Professor of the Department of Art Science, Tama Art University in Tokyo. Since 2008, Hasegawa has been a member of the Asian Art Council at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York. She has also served as Artistic Director and Chief Curator at the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art in Kanazawa, Japan. She is Artistic Director of Inujima Art House Project (2011-present) and was Curator for Art Basel in Hong Kong Encounters (2012-2014). She will be a curator for New Sensorium in Infosphere: Exit from Failure of Modernism to be held at ZKM | Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe, Germany in April, 2016.
Some of Hasegawa’s recent projects include BUNNY SMACH – design to touch the world (2013) at Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo, and Trans Cool Tokyo (2010-11) at Singapore Art Museum. At the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, where she was appointed as Founding Artistic Director, she curated Matthew Barney: Drawing Restraint (2005). She was Curator of 11th Sharjah Biennial (2013); Artistic Advisor of 12th Venice Architectural Biennale (2010); Co-Curator of 29th São Paulo Biennial (2010); Curator of When Lives Become Form – Dialogue with the Future Brazil / Japan, Museu de Arte Moderna de Sao Paulo (MAM) (2008); Co-Curator of Sensorium: Embodied Experience, Technology, and Contemporary Art, MIT List Visual Arts Center, Boston, Mass. (2006); Commissioner of Japanese Pavilion of 50th Venice Biennale (2003); Co-Curator of the 4th Shanghai Biennale (2002); and Artistic Director of the 7th International Istanbul Biennial (2001).
Her publications include, Kazuyo Sejima + Ryue Nishizawa: SANAA, Phaidon Press, 2006 and numerous contributions to publications such as Modern Women: Women Artists at the Museum of Modern Art, Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2010. She has also served on the jury for the Hugo Boss Prize, Guggenheim Museum (2002); Hermes Award, Korea (2003); and the 48 Esposizione La Biennale di Venezia (1999), among others.
Steven Nash, founding Director of the Nasher Sculpture Center and Director Emeritus of the Palm Springs Art Museum
The Director of the Palm Springs Art Museum from 2007 until his recent retirement at the beginning of 2015, Steven Nash was also the founding Director of the Nasher Sculpture Center from 2001-2007, overseeing the ground-up organization of this remarkable museum for its opening in 2003.
In addition to steering the genesis of the Nasher’s Renzo Piano-designed building and the sculpture collection it houses, throughout his career Nash participated in the design and development of three other new museum buildings and wings at the Dallas Museum of Art, California Palace of the Legion of Honor, and de Young Museum, and oversaw the addition of two new satellite facilities to the Palm Springs Art Museum. He has served as Associate Director, Chief Curator, and Curator of European Art, The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco (1988-2003); Deputy Director/Chief Curator (1980-86) and Acting Director (1987-1988), Dallas Museum of Art; Research Curator (1973-1976), Chief Curator (1976-1980), and Assistant Director (1980), Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY. During his roles at these various institutions, Nash was responsible for over 1000 art acquisitions.
Nash has organized numerous exhibitions including A Century of Modern Sculpture: The Raymond and Patsy Nasher Collection, Dallas Museum of Art and National Gallery of Art (1988), Madrid, Florence, Tel Aviv (1988-1989); Picasso and the War Years: 1937-1945, California Palace of the Legion of Honor (1998) and Guggenheim Museum, New York (1999); Modern Sculpture: From Rodin to Picasso, Palm Springs Art Museum at Palm Desert (2012).
Nash has also written extensively on a wide range of art historical subjects, including many with a focus on sculpture, such as Naum Gabo: Sixty Years of Constructivism, Dallas Museum of Art (1985); Picasso the Sculptor, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco (1995); was editor of the Nasher Sculpture Center Handbook, and author of “The Nasher Collection: Celebrating Modern Sculpture,” Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas (2003); and has contributed essays to exhibition catalogues on Alain Kirili, David Smith, John Chamberlain, and Fausto Melotti.
Alexander Potts, Art Historian
Alex Potts is Max Loehr Collegiate Professor at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He received his PhD in the History of Art at the Warburg Institute in London. He has been a Visiting Scholar at the Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles; Ailsa Mellon Bruce Senior Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; Slade Lecturer of Fine Art at the University of Oxford, England; Kirk Varnedoe Visiting Professor, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University; and he is currently a Member of the School of Historical Studies, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, NJ.
His work on art and artistic theory covers a number of areas—sculptural aesthetics and the history of sculpture, experimental practices and the aesthetics of realism in 20th century art, art and artistic theory in the 19th century and Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment conceptions of the classical ideal. His main publication on the latter was his book Flesh and the Ideal: Winckelmann and the Origins of Art History (Yale University Press, 1994). In addition to The Sculptural Imagination: Figurative, Modernist, Minimalist (Yale University Press, 2000), his work on sculpture includes a co-edited anthology of texts on modern sculpture, The Modern Sculpture Reader (2007), reissued by the Getty Research Institute in 2012); and articles on David Smith, Alberto Giacometti, Melvin Edwards, and many other 20th century sculptors. In his more recent research, Potts has been arguing for the significance of experimental forms of realism in post-war European and American art. This was the subject of the Slade Lectures in Fine Art he gave at the University of Oxford in 2008 and of the Kirk Varnedoe Memorial Lectures at the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University in 2009, and also of his book, Experiments in Modern Realism: World Making, Politics and the Everyday in Post-war European and American Art, published by Yale University Press in 2013. The latter examines a variety of forms of art, from the postwar painting of De Kooning and Dubuffet to New Brutalist and Pop image and object making, and actions and assemblages of artists such as Rauschenberg and Beuys. His current book project is an exploration of naturalist aesthetics and the picturing of the social in late 19th-century and early 20th–century art.
Nicholas Serota, Director, Tate
Nicholas Serota has been Director of Tate since 1988. He was previously Director of the Whitechapel Art Gallery and of the Museum of Modern Art, Oxford. During his period at Tate, the institution has opened Tate St Ives (1993) and Tate Modern (2000), redefining the Millbank building as Tate Britain (2000). Tate has also broadened its field of interest to include 20th-century photography, film, performance, and occasionally architecture, as well as collecting from Latin America, Asia, the Middle East, and Africa. He recently co-curated exhibitions at Tate Modern on Cy Twombly, Gerhard Richter, and Henri Matisse: the Cut Outs.
Nicholas Serota has been a member of the Visual Arts Advisory Committee of the British Council, a Trustee of the Architecture Foundation and a commissioner on the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment. He was a member of the Olympic Delivery Authority, which was responsible for building the Olympic Park in East London for 2012.