Mark Dion is the 2008 winner of the Smithsonian American Art Museum‘s prestigious Lucelia Artist Award. Given to an artist under fifty who has shown distinguished vision and achieved a substantial body of work, the award honored Dion (Season 4) for his prolific creativity and impressive production, which includes mixed-media installations, sculptures and public projects that explore the relationship between art, science and history through pseudo-scientific methods of investigation and display.
A selection panel of five independent jurors chose Dion from a nominee list that included Doug Aitken, Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla (Season 4), Slater Bradley, Matthew Buckingham, Keith Edmier, Spencer Finch, Harrell Fletcher, Mark Grotjahn, Trenton Doyle Hancock (Season 2), Rachel Harrison, Zoe Leonard, Suzanne McClelland, Wangechi Mutu and Dana Schutz.
“The Lucelia Artist Award acknowledges Mark Dion’s tireless imagination and ongoing achievement as an artist and educator. His archeological digs and museum interventions celebrate the value of exploration and learning, and invite audiences to embark on their own journey of intellectual discovery. This approach, coupled with a prodigious commitment to visual creativity, has inspired a generation of artists and established Dion as one of the most innovative contemporary artists working today.”
Dion is the eighth annual winner of the $25,000 award, which is intended to encourage the artist’s future development and experimentation. Congratulations!