$100,000 Art Prize Winner Revealed in Dallas’ Warehouse — And the Nasher Goes To …

For the third year in a row, the top brass of the Dallas art world assembled at The Warehouse, Cindy and Howard Rachofsky’s private collection space, for the imminent reveal of the next Nasher Prize Laureate.

Established in 2015, the Nasher Prize is a prestigious international award presented annually to a living artist who has made a significant impact on our understanding of contemporary sculpture.

This year’s recipient is Theaster Gates, a Chicago-based sculptor who wins $100,000 and an award designed by Renzo Piano — architect of the Nasher Sculpture Center.

French sculptor Pierre Huyghe won the Nasher Prize last year; Colombian-born artist Doris Salcedo was the first honoree. Recipients are selected by a jury of museum directors, curators, artists, and art historians chosen by the Nasher’s director, Jeremy Strick.

Gates is known for his socially engaging work ranging from performance art to converting old buildings into new sculpture. He also trained as a potter, and his art draws on deeply personal experiences. His work has been exhibited at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. among many others.

Says Strick of Gates’ selection: “[The jury] devoted close attention to over 100 artists from 25 countries and six continents. [Gates’] work itself embraces a range of practices, starting with and returning to material and the place where it was found. [His] work emerges from and responds to a place in North America, a neighborhood, in the great city where the artist grew up.”

The Nasher Prize programming has grown significantly since its inception two years ago. “The Nasher Prize Dialogues series now includes a graduate symposium about the work of the laureate, which brings students and a keynote speaker from around the world to Dallas to present scholarly work on the recipient of the prize,” Strick says.

Theaster Gates will be honored at the black-tie Nasher Prize Gala on Saturday, April 7, 2018 at the Nasher Sculpture Center.