Arts / Museums

Life Altering, $100,000 Art Prize Awarded in Dallas’ Warehouse — And the Nasher Goes to…

BY // 09.25.18

Raymond and Patsy Nasher’s passion for collecting dates back close to 70 years. On a trip to Mexico in 1950, the late couple’s journey began as they became interested in pre-Columbian art and started acquiring works.

It was those objects that fostered the Nashers’ appreciation of modern, three-dimensional objects. The couple’s zeal for collecting burgeoned over the decades to eventually become a great gift to the city of Dallas, as well as the world-at-large — the Nasher Sculpture Center.

The Nashers had an eye to the past, but also an eye to the future. In that spirit, the Nasher Prize launched in 2015 as a nod to the art collectors’ legacy. The internationally renowned award is presented annually to a living artist, whose work has had an extraordinary impact on the larger conversation and understanding of sculpture.

And tonight, the top brass of the Dallas art world assembled at The Warehouse, Cindy and Howard Rachofsky’s private collection space, for the reveal of the 2019 Nasher Prize Laureate. Remarks were made by Nasher Prize co-chairs John Dayton and Fanchon and Howard Hallam and Nasher director Jeremy Strick, before the big reveal.

The 2019 Nasher Prize recipient is Isa Genzken, the 69-year-old German artist known for her work in mediums ranging from video to collages to photography and more over a career that spans 40 years. Her piece “Rose III,” a monumental 26-foot-tall steel rose, now lords over Zuccotti Park in New York City.

Genzken’s been called “arguably one of the most important and influential female artists of the past 30 years” in a recent Museum of Modern Art retrospective.

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“Isa Genzken has an uncanny way of taking the pulse of every moment, changing her methods of sculpture-making in order to best describe the energy of the time,” Strick tells PaperCity. “Because of that, when looking back over her career of the last 40 years, you are able to get a sense of each decade’s spirit, and see how she has shaped subsequent generations of artists through her creative disruption of traditional approaches and forms.”

Genzken will be formally honored — and given a $100,000 cash prize and an award designed by Renzo Piano — with a gala at the Nasher Sculpture Center on April 6, 2019. She is the second woman laureate in the Nasher prize’s four-year history.

When asked what makes Genzken’s work stick out even among the litanty of Nasher Prize winners, Strick is clear.

“The improvisational quality of Isa Genzken’s work — the near-constant re-invention of her practice, especially through assemblage — has a unique ability to respond to contemporary life,” the Nasher director says.

Isa Genzken and the Nasher’s Legacy

This is no easy selection. And the range of artists considered for the prize is wide.

Last year’s recipient was Theaster Gates, a Chicago-based artist known for his socially engaging work ranging from performance art to converting old buildings into interactive, community-based sculpture. French sculptor Pierre Huyghe won the Nasher Prize in 2017 and Colombia-born artist Doris Salcedo was the first honoree in 2016.

“Over the last four years, we’ve seen the Nasher Prize enrich discourse about sculpture and broaden engagement with an expansive and diverse audience, from our international Nasher Prize Dialogues, which take focused conversations about sculpture around the world; to the graduate symposium, which provides a platform for students to present new scholarship on our laureates; to education activities for teens and students, which help articulate the work of each winner to youth,” Strick says.

Earlier this year, a jury of renowned museum directors, curators, artists and art historians convened in London to pick the 2019 laureate.

The 2019 selection committee includes artist Phyllida Barlow; artist Huma Bhabha; curator at large of Latin America for the Guggenheim Museum Pablo León de la Barra; senior curator of the National Gallery of Art Lynne Cooke; director of the Haus der Kunst Okwui Enwezor; history of art professor at the University College London Briony Fer; chief curator of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo, Yuko Hasegawa; artistic director of MAXXI, Rome, Hou Hanru; and Sir Nicholas Serota, chair of the Arts Council England.

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