This Week in Art 9.25-10.1: Theaster Gates Wins Nasher Sculpture Prize

Theaster Gates. Courtesy of the Nasher Sculpture Center.

On Tuesday the Nasher Sculpture Center announced Theaster Gates as the winner of this year’s $100,000 Nasher Prize for Sculpture. This is the third year of the prize, and we’re mighty proud that both of the previous recipients—Pierre Huyghe and Doris Salcedo—are Art21 roster artists too. Also this week:

  • Kara Walker will be awarded the W.E.B. Du Bois Medal during next month’s annual ceremony at Harvard’s Hutchins Center for African & African American Research, alongside rapper LL Cool J, filmmaker Ava DuVernay, and Democratic strategist Donna Brazile.
  • The first phase of Cornell Tech’s 5-acre campus opened last week on Roosevelt Island. The campus’ Bloomberg Center features a new commissioned work by Matthew Ritchie entitled Everything that Rises Must Converge, which rises four stories through the building’s atrium.
  • Kerry James Marshall is painting a new mural in Chicago honoring the cultural achievements of 20 Black women, among them Oprah Winfrey and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Achy Obejas. Painted on the Garland Court façade of the Chicago Cultural Center, the work is described by the artist as a kind of “Forest Rushmore,” offering a “park-like view…[that] honors the mission of the building as the hub of artistic activity in Chicago.”

Events & exhibitions

Middletown, CT

Stowe, VT

Johnson City, TN

  • East Tennessee State University’s Slocumb Galleries just opened a solo exhibition by John Feodorov entitled Absurdity of Truth. On view through October 14, the show features a selection of Feodorov’s prints, fiber, sculptural installation and video work.

Houston

  • Trenton Doyle Hancock is being celebrated by Art League Houston as the 2017 Texas Artist of the Year with a solo exhibition, Texas: 1997-2017. The show opens Friday, September 29 and will remain on view through November 17.

Las Vegas


Toronto

  • Saturday, September 30, from 7 – 8 pm—Shahzia Sikander is giving a talk at the Ismaili Centre as part of the annual all-night arts festival Nuit Blanche. She’ll discuss her installation for the festival, Disruption as Rapture 2016, which animates the 18th-century Gulshan-i lsquo (“Rose Garden of Love”) manuscript.

London

Stockholm

Timișoara & Arad, Romania

Seoul