New York, NY. Creative Link for the Arts and the New Museum announced the six finalists for the Ordway Prize, which is given to a Curator/Arts Writer and an Artist. Tania Bruguera, from Cuba, is one of the artist finally for this unrestricted cash prize of $100,000.

 

Now in its third cycle, the Ordway Prize is the only unrestricted international award of this caliber that recognizes a Curator/Arts Writer and is also one of the most generous awards given to a contemporary Artist. Candidates for the Ordway Prize are identified through an anonymous nomination process of submissions drawn from a global pool of curators, writers, artists, and museum directors, led by Jennifer McSweeney, Director of Creative Link for the Arts, and Richard Flood, Chief Curator at the New Museum. A jury composed of leading arts professionals will select the two Ordway Prize recipients. The Ordway Prize winners will be announced in early 2010.

 

The Ordway Prize was created in 2005, and was named for the naturalist, philanthropist, and arts patron Katherine Ordway.The prize acknowledges the contributions of a Curator/Arts Writer and an Artist whose work has had significant impact on the field of contemporary art, but who has yet to receive broad public recognition. Finalists for the Ordway Prize are midcareer talents between the ages of forty and sixty-five, with a developed body of work extending over a minimum of fifteen years.

 

Past Ordway Prize recipient have included Columbian Artist Doris Salcedo in 2006, who is considered one of today's most internationally respected sculptors and is represented in museum collections around the world.

 

“I am inspired by the short list of Curator/Arts Writers and Artists as they represent such a rich cross section of talents working today. This year, more than ever, I find it incredibly valuable to provide this type of support,” said Jennifer McSweeney, Director of Creative Link for the Arts.

 

“The Ordway Prize is singular in shining a light on substantial yet under recognized creativity and contributions to the field. We are delighted to participate in and host this prestigious award,” said Lisa Phillips, Toby Devan Lewis Director, New Museum.

 

ABOUT THE ARTIST FINALISTS

 

Tania Bruguera was born in 1968 in Havana, Cuba, and currently lives and works in Havana and Chicago. She is an interdisciplinary artist working primarily in behavior art, performance, and installation. She is the founder/director of Arte de Conducta, the first performance studies and political art program in Latin America, hosted by Instituto Superior de Arte in Havana, and is an Assistant Professor at the University of Chicago. Bruguera participated in Documenta 11 in 2002, as well as in the 49th, 51st, and 53rd Venice Biennales in 2001, 2005, and 2009. Her work has also been exhibited at the New Museum, NewYork; The Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Museum für Moderne Kunst, Germany; Tate Modern and Tate Britain, England; Pompidou, France; and Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Cuba. In 1998, she was a Guggenheim Fellow; in 2002, she was an Artist in Residency at Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture; and in 2008 she received the Prince Claus Award in the Netherlands. She received her masters in fine arts from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and Instituto Superior de Arte in Cuba. A survey show about her work will open in January 2010 at the Neuberger Museum in New York.

 

William Pope.L was born in 1955 in Newark, New Jersey, and currently lives and works in Maine, where he lectures at Bates College. He is a prominent multidisciplinary artist known for his conceptual, often performance-based art, including a set of “crawls” on his belly, military-style through city streets. In 2009, he was commissioned to create a reinvention of Allan Kaprow’s environment Yard for Hauser and Wirth Gallery in New York. His solo exhibitions include “Corbu Pops” at the Carpenter Center, Harvard University in 2009, and “Drawing, Dreaming and Drowning,” at The Art Institute of Chicago in 2008. In 2002 and 2003, a retrospective of his work “eRacism” toured the United States. Pope.L has also participated in group shows at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, and has presented performances and crawls across the United States, including one at the 2002 Whitney Biennial. Pope.L has been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Visual Arts. He studied at the Pratt Institute before receiving his bachelors at Montclair State College and a masters in fine art at Rutgers University in New Jersey.

 

Artur Zmijewski was born in 1966 in Warsaw, Poland, where he currently lives and works. He uses film, video, and photography to present staged “social experiments” he has devised—ranging in theme from the politicized to the psychosocial. In 2007–2008, he was a DAAD Artist in Residence in Berlin, Germany. On October 28, 2009, Zmijewski will present a recent selection of work for the Museum of Modern Art’s “Project 91” series. In November 2009, the Cornerhouse will present the artist’s first major UK survey. In 2008, Zmijewski showed Oko za Oko (An Eye for an Eye) in the New Museum’s “After Nature” exhibition. Zmijewski’s film Them was shown at Documenta 12 in 2007, and Singing Lesson 1 Manifesta 4 in 2002. In 2005, his film Repetition was shown in the Polish Pavilion at the 50th Venice Biennial. For the exhibition “Guarene Arte 2000,” he was given the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo Per L’Arte prize for the work Oko za Oko (An Eye for an Eye). He studied at the Faculty of Sculpture of the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw from 1990–95, and received his diploma from the studio of Professor Grzegorz Kowalski in 1995. Zmijewski was an editor of Czereja magazine.

 

ABOUT CREATIVE LINK FOR THE ARTS

 

Creative Link for the Arts is a privately funded nonprofit organization dedicated to facilitating partnership in philanthropy and forging innovative relationships between art institutions, nonprofits, corporations, and philanthropists interested in supporting the arts and creating a cultural legacy.

 

ABOUT THE NEW MUSEUM

 

Founded in 1977, the New Museum is a leading destination for new art and new ideas. It is Manhattan’s only dedicated contemporary art museum and is respected internationally for the adventurousness and global scope of its curatorial program. For more information, visit newmuseum.org.

 

For more information, contact Gabriel Einsohn, Communications Director, New Museum; or Andrea Schwan, Andrea Schwan Inc.