Major

The Ordway Prize

The Ordway is a biennial art prize that recognizes both a mid-career artist and curator / arts writer with an unrestricted award of $100,000

The Ordway prize is a unique philanthropic partnership between Creative Link for the Arts and the New Museum which amplifies both institutions’ shared mission of supporting often-underrecognized creative individuals who are changing the way the world understands and thinks about contemporary culture. Named for the naturalist, philanthropist, and arts patron Katherine Ordway, the Ordway Prize was created in 2005 as a biennial award to acknowledge the contributions of midcareer artists and contemporary arts writers/ curators whose work has had significant impact on the field of contemporary art, but who have not yet received commensurate public visibility and critical acclaim.

Nominees 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. Candidates for the prize are identified through an anonymous nomination process of submissions drawn from a global pool of curators, writers, artists, and museum directors. A jury composed of visionary arts professionals then selects each award winner. The 2008 Ordway Prize jury included Jennifer McSweeney, Director of Creative Link for the Arts; Doris Salcedo, artist from Bogota, Colombia, and winner of first artist’s Ordway Prize in 2005; Vicente Todoli, Chief Curator and Director of the Tate Modern, London; and Hamza Walker, Director of Education and Associate Curator at the Renaissance Society, University of Chicago.

The 2008 Winners are:

James Elaine, Curator and Writer
Cildo Meireles, Artist

Past winners:

Doris Salcedo, Artist
Ralph Rugoff, Curator

Sponsors TOP

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

Profiles TOP

Elaine

James Elaine

James Elaine has supported local, national, and international emerging artists throughout his career as a curator. Since 1999, he has been the curator of the “Hammer Projects” series, a program that Elaine and Director Ann Philbin created, where he has organized over sixty-five exhibitions including three large survey shows. Prior to that, he was the curator for the Drawing Center’s “Selections” series in New York City. Elaine is particularly respected for his consistency in showcasing artists very early in their careers, often for the first time in an institutional setting, and thereby introducing the public to important new forms of expression. Among the artists to whom Elaine has given critical early support are Kara Walker, Layla Ali, Janine Antoni, Mark Bradford, Teresita Fernandez, Mark Grotjahn, Glenn Ligon, and many others. Elaine will become Adjunct Curator at the Hammer this month as he embarks on a year of research and independent curatorial work in China.

Photo by Elon Schoenholz


Cildo

Cildo Meireles

Emerging in the 1960s when international art was undergoing formal and conceptual shifts, Cildo Meireles helped galvanize theoretical discussions about art and its relationship to the larger social world in which it operates, producing provocative, poignant, technically daring, and deeply influential art from his home base in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Over four decades, Meireles became one of the most influential living artists in post-war Latin American art, combining a strong interest in ethical relationships, conceptual and philosophical explorations, and the physical and sensual experience of the viewer. In 1970, at a time when Brazil’s official media was tightly controlled by a handful of individuals, and government censors exerted control over artists in every discipline, Meireles famously created Insertions Into Ideological Circuits, printing politically charged slogans on currency and Coca-Cola bottles before returning them to circulation. In the years since this work appeared, Meireles’ prodigious oeuvre has been marked by consistent conceptual complexity and poetic use of materials, often in large-scale installation works that engage viewers on a physical level. He has had numerous international exhibitions, including solo shows at IVAM in Valencia (1995); the New Museum (1999); the Museum of Modern Art, São Paulo (2000); and Musee des Beaux Arts, Strasbourg (2003). Meireles will have a solo exhibition at the Tate Modern, London in 2008-2009.

Photo by Wilton Montenegro