New Museum Announces Major Award for Sculpture by Women Artists

Hostetler Wrigley Sculpture Award is supporting the production of new sculpture by women artists. Teresita Fernandez, Joan Jonas, Julie Mehretu, Cindy Sherman, and Kiki Smith to Select Woman Artist for $400K Grant.

New Museum Announces a Major Award for Sculpture by Women Artists, Made Possible by the Hostetler/Wrigley Foundation.

The New Museum announces artists Teresita Fernandez, Joan Jonas, Julie Mehretu, Cindy Sherman, and Kiki Smith as the jury for the inaugural Hostetler Wrigley Sculpture Award, a biennial award supporting the production of new sculpture by women artists. Made possible by the Hostetler/Wrigley Foundation, the $400,000 grant supports the artist’s honorarium, production, installation, administration, and exhibition of new work on the New Museum’s forthcoming public plaza on the Bowery—a new public space created as part of the Museum’s OMA-designed building expansion. There will be five recipients of the Hostetler Wrigley Sculpture Award over ten years, with the winner selected by a rotating jury. The inaugural recipient will be announced in spring 2023.

“While great strides have been made in recent years towards greater gender parity in the arts, this new award aims to address the persistent gap in support for women artists undertaking ambitious, large-scale commissions. The New Museum’s long history supporting women artists makes it the perfect place for this,” said Sue Hostetler Wrigley, Co-Founder of the Hosteler/Wrigley Foundation.

“With our partners at the Hostetler/Wrigley Foundation, the New Museum is thrilled inaugurate this award with an outstanding group of pathbreaking artists serving as the jury,” said Lisa Phillips, Toby Devan Lewis Director of the New Museum.

Founded in 1977 by Marcia Tucker, the New Museum has been led by women directors throughout its 45-year history and championed women artists through commissions, residencies, and milestone exhibitions, recently including monographic presentations of Lynda Benglis, Nicole Eisenman, Lubaina Himid, Kapwani Kiwanga, Lynn Hershman Leeson, Simone Leigh, Sarah Lucas, Carol Rama, Faith Ringgold, Pipilotti Rist, Mika Rottenberg, Rosemarie Trockel, Kaari Upson, Andra Ursuta, and Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, among many others.

In 2016, the Museum established the Artemis Council of women philanthropists supporting women artists, of which Sue Hostetler Wrigley was a founding member. The launch of the Hostetler Wrigley Sculpture Award continues the New Museum’s longstanding commitment to gender equity across its exhibitions, public programs, and leadership.

As a non-collecting institution, the New Museum will commission and support the production of the sculptural works, which the artists will then retain after their presentation at the Museum.

Throughout the decade it is awarded, the Hostetler/Wrigley Sculpture Award will be one of the biggest art awards of its kind in New York. Its purse is four times bigger, for example, than that of the Guggenheim Museum’s biennial Hugo Boss Prize, which is among the most esteemed art awards in the world.