2025 Foster Prize Recipients and Exhibition @ ICA Boston - Alison Croney Moses, Yorgos Efthymiadis, Damien Hoar de Galvan, and Sneha Shrestha (aka Imagine)

James and Audrey Foster Prize Exhibition 

Alison Croney Moses, Yorgos Efthymiadis, Damien Hoar de Galvan, and Sneha Shrestha (aka Imagine) 

Institute of Contemporary Art / ICA Boston

August 25, 2025 - January 19, 2026

Alison Croney Moses, Yorgos Efthymiadis, Damien Hoar de Galvan, and Sneha Shrestha (aka Imagine) have been named the recipients of the 2025 James and Audrey Foster Prize, announced the ICA Boston. Their work will be presented in the 2025 James and Audrey Foster Prize Exhibition. Organized by Tessa Bachi Haas, Assistant Curator, the exhibition recognizes the global and local roots of each artist, and how this is reflected in their practice.

“The biannual James and Audrey Foster Prize Exhibition consistently introduces audiences to the vitality of Boston’s artistic community and supports artists through exhibition, collaboration and a deepened sense of community. It is always a highly anticipated moment within our exhibition program,” said Jill Medvedow, Ellen Matilda Poss Director. “We are grateful to Jim and Audrey Foster, whose ongoing generosity over two decades has made it possible for us to share the work of immensely talented area artists with many thousands of people in person and online.”   

“We are thrilled to congratulate the 2025 Foster Prize artists, whose work demonstrates the strength and creativity of Boston’s arts scene. We can’t wait to see their work on view in the ICA galleries,” James and Audrey Foster added.  

Following recent visits to over 50 Boston-area artist studios, Haas wishes to express her immense gratitude to each artist with whom she has met during this time and over her years in Boston. “It is a unique and necessary privilege to spend extended time with artists in their studios,” said Tessa Bachi Haas. “I am immensely proud to organize an exhibition of four outstanding artists who are pillars of supporting the arts, equity, and education in our region.” 

“Each of this year’s Foster Prize recipients draws on materials that connect their local and global roots,” said Tessa Bachi Haas. “Whether through woodworking, installation, sculpture, painting, and photography, the expansive art practices of Croney Moses, Efthymiadis, Galvan, and Shrestha underpin the strength of our greater Boston arts community.”  

The James and Audrey Foster Prize is key to the ICA’s effort to recognize, present, and acquire works by exceptional Boston-area artists. First established in 1999, the Foster Prize (formerly the ICA Artist Prize) expanded its format when the museum opened its Seaport building in 2006. James and Audrey Foster, passionate collectors and lifelong supporters of contemporary art, endowed the prize, ensuring the ICA’s ability to sustain and grow the program for years to come. 

The program has proven to be a springboard for many artists to have major museum exhibitions. The selection of artists for the James and Audrey Foster Prize Exhibition spans generations and results from sustained conversations with Boston’s community of working artists. More than 46 artists have participated in the Foster Prize exhibition program, including: Ambreen Butt (1999), Taylor Davis (2001), Kelly Sherman (2006), Rania Matar (2008), Evelyn Rydz (2010), Luther Price (2013), Lucy Kim (2017), Lavaughn Jenkins (2019), Marlon Forrester (2021), Yu-Wen Wu (2023), and many more. Works by many Foster Prize recipients have entered the ICA’s permanent collection.  

ALISON CRONEY MOSES BIOGRAPHY

Alison Croney Moses (born 1983, Fayetteville, North Carolina; lives and works in Roslindale, MA, and Allston, Boston, MA) creates wooden objects that reach for your senses—the smell of cedar, the glowing color of honey, the round form that signifies safety and warmth, the gentle curve that beckons to be touched. Born and raised in North Carolina by Guyanese parents, Croney Moses remembers making clothing, food, furniture, and art as part of her childhood. She carries these values and habits into adulthood and parenting, creating experiences, conversations, and educational programs that cultivate the current and next generation of artists and leaders in art and craft. Croney Moses holds an MA in Sustainable Business & Communities from Goddard College, and a BFA in Furniture Design from Rhode Island School of Design. She has been included in group exhibitions at Houston Center for Contemporary Craft (2024-25); Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2024); Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Discovery Center (2023); Center for Art in Wood, Philadelphia (2022-23); MassArt Art Museum, Boston (2022); the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (2021-22); and Center for Architecture + Design, Philadelphia (2021), among others. Croney Moses’s work is in the collections of Fuller Craft Museum, Brockton, MA; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Detroit Institute of Arts Museum; and Renwick Gallery, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C. She is recipient of the 2024 Black Mountain College International Artist Prize, the 2023 Boston Artadia Award, the 2022 USA Fellowship in Craft, and a finalist of the 2024 LOEWE FOUNDATION Craft Prize. She will debut her first public art installation at the Boston Public Art Triennial in 2025 through their Accelerator program. This is Croney Moses’s first institutional solo exhibition. 

DAMIEN HOAR DE GALVAN BIOGRAPHY

Damien Hoar de Galvan (born 1979, Northampton, MA; lives and works in Milton, MA) has developed a unique output of painted sculpture made primarily from recycled wood for nearly 20 years. Some of the wood Hoar de Galvan uses is reclaimed from his time as a preparator at the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum in Lincoln, MA, and from his father’s carpentry projects, which he began in the 1970s as an immigrant to Massachusetts from Argentina. Hoar de Galvan grew up between Western Massachusetts, Argentina, and spent most of his adolescence in Beverly, MA. He holds a Post-Baccalaureate Certificate from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and a BA from Green Mountain College in Poultney, VT. Hoar de Galvan has exhibited in group exhibitions at Concord Center for Visual Art, Concord, MA (2024); Drive-By Projects, Watertown, MA (2023); and has had several solo and group exhibitions at galleries in New York, Seattle, Santa Barbara, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and across Massachusetts. He is represented by Schoolhouse Gallery in Provincetown, MA. This is Hoar de Galvan’s first institutional solo exhibition. 

SNEHA SHRESTHA (aka Imagine) BIOGRAPHY

Sneha Shrestha (born 1987, Kathmandu, Nepal; lives and works in Kathmandu, Boston, and Somerville, MA), also known as Imagine, creates paintings, works on paper, sculpture, and larger-than-life murals that harmoniously blend her native Nepali and Sanskrit languages, mantras, sacred sounds used in meditation and prayer, and American graffiti hand styles. Education has always been at the forefront of Shrestha’s work to celebrate and inspire an appreciation for the beauty and diversity of Nepali language. Shrestha received her MA in Education from Harvard University. She has had a solo exhibition at Cantor Arts Gallery, College of the Holy Cross, Worcester, MA (2024); and participated in group exhibitions at Wrightwood 659, Chicago (2024-25); Nepal Arts Council, Kathmandu (2024); and Rubin Museum of Himalayan Art, New York (2024). In 2025, she will complete a public art project in partnership with Rubin Museum and New York City Department of Transportation’s Temporary Art Program. One of her iconic public murals is at the corner of Massachusetts Avenue and Main Street in Central Square, Cambridge, MA, and her work can also be found in the collections of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; and Fidelity Art Collection, among others. Shrestha’s additional honors include a commissioned thirty-foot sculpture at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston (2024); a grant from the Collective Futures Fund (2024); becoming the first contemporary Nepali artist the be included in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston’s permanent collection (2023); inclusion in WBUR The ARTery’s 25 Millennials of Color (2019); recognition as one of the 100 most influential women in Nepal by the Nepal Cultural Council (2018); a Boston Artist-in-Residence Award (2018); the HUBWeek Change Maker Award (2018); South Asia and the Arts Fund Grant, Harvard University (2017); and Project Zero Artist-in-Residence Award, Harvard University (2017). She was recently selected for a studio residency at Boston Center for the Arts. 

YORGOS EFTHYMIADIS BIOGRAPHY

Yorgos Efthymiadis (born 1972, Halkidiki, Greece; lives and works in Somerville, MA) is an artist and curator who works in photographic media. Drawing from his experience as an architectural photographer, recent series by Efthymiadis explore portraiture of kin through their material cultures and surrounding natural environments in Greece, Boston, and beyond. Efthymiadis has had solo exhibitions at Gallery Kayafas, Boston (2024, 2019, and 2016) and the Griffin Museum of Photography, Winchester, MA (2016); and has been included in several group exhibitions including at the Griffin Museum of Photography, Winchester, MA (2025, 2024, 2023, and 2020); Boston City Hall (2024 and 2017); Filter Photo Gallery, Chicago (2023, 2022, 2017, and 2014); Vermont Center for Photography, Brattleboro, VT (2022 and 2017); Danforth Art Museum, Framingham, MA (2022, 2016, 2015, and 2013); Distillery Gallery, Boston (2021); Rhode Island Center for Photographic Arts, Providence (2020); Somerville Museum, Somerville, MA (2019); and Photographic Resource Center, Boston (2015). Efthymiadis is an awardee of the Artist’s Resource Trust A.R.T. Grant (2024); a finalist for the Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellowship (2017); and recipient of the St. Botolph Club Foundation Emerging Artist Award (2017). A board member of Somerville Arts Council and chair of the Visual Arts Fellowship Grants since 2017, Efthymiadis has also been a reviewer for the Lenscratch Student Prize Awards since 2023 and finds it deeply fulfilling to work with fellow photographers and give back to the photographic community. In 2015, Efthymiadis created a gallery in his own kitchen titled The Curated Fridge, to celebrate fine art photography and connect photographers with established and influential curators, gallerists, publishers, and artists from around the world through free, quarterly curated calls. The Curated Fridge recently celebrated 10 years of exhibitions featuring more than 1500 artists in 40 shows juried by 45 guest curators.  

ICA - INSTITUTE OF CONTEMPORARY ART - BOSTON

25 Harbor Shore Drive, Boston, MA, 02210

www.icaboston.org

Anonymous Was A Woman: The First 25 Years @ Grey Art Museum, New York University

Anonymous Was A Woman 

The First 25 Years

Grey Art Museum, NYU

April 1 – July 19, 2025

Elizabeth King (AWAW 2014) 

Still from Feints and Sleights, 2017 

Stop-frame animation, color, silent, 3:00 min 

Courtesy the artist, Richmond

Judy Pfaff (AWAW 2012) 

Ram's Delhi, 2012 

Wood, mild steel rod, melted plastics, black aluminum foil, 

and LED and UV Fluorescent light, 70 x 132 x 17 in. 

Courtesy the artist and Miles McEnery Gallery, New York

Betye Saar (AWAW 2004) 

Globe Trotter, 2007 

Mixed-media assemblage, 32 1/2 x 18 1/4 x 14 1/8 in. 

© Betye Saar 

Courtesy the artist and Roberts Projects, Los Angeles

The Grey Art Museum at New York University presents Anonymous Was A Woman: The First 25 Years, an exhibition celebrating recipients of the titular grant for mid-career women artists living and working in the United States. This ambitious exhibition invites reflection on a quarter century of artistic achievement tied to the Anonymous Was A Woman (AWAW) grant program, which, since 1996, has supported women artists over the age of 40 with unrestricted awards. Six years in the making, Anonymous Was A Woman is organized by the Grey Art Museum at NYU and guest curated by Nancy Princenthal and Vesela Sretenović.

Featuring some 50 artworks by 41 of the 251 award recipients from when the grant was inaugurated in 1996 through 2020, the exhibition showcases a range of media and subjects by artists including Jeanne Silverthorne (AWAW 1996), Laura Aguilar (AWAW 2000), Senga Nengudi (AWAW 2005), Mary Heilmann (AWAW 2006), An-My Lê (AWAW 2006), Carrie Mae Weems (AWAW 2007), Ida Applebroog (AWAW 2009), Jungjin Lee (2011), Janine Antoni (AWAW 2014), and Jennifer Wen Ma (AWAW 2019), among others. With each year represented by at least one artist, the exhibition includes works created within a few years of their grant, demonstrating the significance of the award to the artist’s growth. 

“Nancy and I sought to create a visually compelling and intellectually stimulating exhibition that balances work by well-established and lesser-known artists. We also wanted to highlight leaps in production that the grant made possible, both practically—many artists were enabled to try new materials and processes—and conceptually,” Vesela Sretenović says. 

All 251 artists are represented in a publication accompanying the exhibition, which also includes critical essays about the awardees by Princenthal, Sretenović, and other women scholars.

Visitors to Anonymous Was A Woman are encounter works that trace the development of contemporary art practice over the last twenty-five years, addressing issues of identity and community; the position of women artists in society; the shifting value of craft; the changing possibilities for installation and time-based media; as well as the many uses of anonymity. Flamethrower, for example, a painting by Carrie Moyer (AWAW 2009) demonstrates the artist’s characteristic high-gloss surfaces and curvaceous, colorful forms, and challenges gendered conventions of abstraction. Rona Pondick (AWAW 2016), also featured in the exhibition, has used her own body to create self-portraits in various materials—such as the colored molded resin of Magenta Swimming in Yellow—that are at once deeply personal and anonymizing. Likewise, Elizabeth King (AWAW 2014) often references her own body when creating precisely moveable, half-scale figurative sculptures and combining them with stop-motion animation, as in Feints and Sleights.

Princenthal explains, “Every single one of the artists who received a grant in our target period is remarkable, and it was an enormous challenge to choose among them. Vesela and I embraced the variety of thematic and formal approaches seen in the awardees’ work, as well as the full range of their regional, ethnic, and racial backgrounds, and the several generations they represent.” For example, Betye Saar’s (AWAW 2004) assemblage, Globe Trotter, depicts a worn vintage doll held captive inside of a small birdcage resting atop a globe—a combination of powerful symbols referencing the history of slavery. Claudia Joskowicz’s (AWAW 2020) Some Dead Don’t Make a Sound, like many of her video and installation works, evokes the transformative effect of violent political events on physical spaces and collective memory.

“I think what is astonishing for all of us,” states Lynn Gumpert, director of the Grey Art Museum since 1997, “is to look over this list of amazing artists and realize the impact they have made on the last twenty-five years of the art scene. As of 2019—when we were first conceiving the show—just 11% of all acquisitions and 14% of exhibitions at major American museums over the past decade were of work by female artists, according to the Burns Halperin Report. We know that there is still a lot of work to be done.”

Last year, Susan Unterberg and AWAW launched the Anonymous Was A Woman Artist Survey in collaboration with journalists Charlotte Burns and Julia Halperin, arts leader Loring Randolph, and SMU Data Arts. A first-of-its-kind study, the survey aims to gain a better understanding of women artists’ lives and careers, and the factors contributing to their successes and challenges. Findings will be made publicly available on April 9, 2025, as part of “Artists Speak: The Anonymous Was A Woman Symposium,” hosted at NYU.  Registration will be available on the AWAW website.

About AWAW

Founded by visionary philanthropist and photographer Susan Unterberg, the Anonymous Was A Woman (AWAW) grant program has provided annual unrestricted gifts of $25,000 each to ten exceptional artists over the age of 40, enabling them to further push boundaries in their creative fields. In 2024 the number of awardees permanently increased to fifteen and the cash prize doubled to $50,000. “Since I am an artist, I knew firsthand that the needs of mid-career artists were generally overlooked,” says Unterberg, who herself remained anonymous until 2018.

The groundbreaking program, inspired by a line from Virginia Woolf’s essay, “A Room of One’s Own,” was established in response to the National Endowment for the Arts’s decision to end funding for individual artists. True to its name, AWAW selects artists via anonymous panels based on recommendations proposed each year by a group of anonymous nominators comprising previous awardees, curators, writers, and other art professionals. 

Susan Unterberg says, “Women throughout history—and especially women artists—have often remained anonymous. They didn’t sign their work, and of course, they received very little recognition. AWAW has given me an immense amount of joy—and mostly since I’ve gone public. It’s a way to show my activism and advocate that women shouldn’t remain anonymous any longer.” 

Over the years, this grant has been transformative for many artists, offering critical financial support and awarding over $8 million to more than 300 recipients to date. In 2022 AWAW partnered with the New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA) to initiate the Environmental Art Grant, a yearly open call for woman-led art projects that inspire thought, action, and ethical engagement with the environment.

For more information on Anonymous Was A Woman, please visit:

anonymouswasawoman.org

Anonymous Was A Woman: The First 25 Years 

List of Exhibiting Artists

Laura Aguilar

Born 1959, San Gabriel, CA

Died 2018, Long Beach, CA

Award year: 2000

Elia Alba 

Born 1962, Brooklyn, NY

Based in the Bronx, NY 

Award year: 2019

Janine Antoni

Born 1964, Freeport, Bahamas 

Based in in New York City

Award year: 2014

Polly Apfelbaum 

Born 1955, Abington Township, PA 

Based in New York City

Award year: 1998

Ida Applebroog

Born 1929, the Bronx, NY

Died 2023, New York City

Award year: 2009

Dotty Attie

Born 1938, Pennsauken, NJ

Based in New York City

Award year: 2018

Uta Barth

Born 1958, Berlin, Germany

Based in Los Angeles, CA

Award year: 2012

Janet Biggs

Born 1959, Harrisburg, PA

Based in New York City

Award year: 2004

Chakaia Booker

Born 1953, Newark, NJ

Based in New York City and Allentown, PA

Award year: 2000

Kathy Butterly

Born 1963, Amityville, NY

Based in New York City

Award year: 2002

Anne Chu

Born 1959, New York City

Died 2016, New York City

Award year: 2001

Sonya Clark

Born 1967, Washington, DC

Based in Amherst, MA

Award year: 2016

Petah Coyne

Born 1953, Oklahoma City

Based in New York City

Award year: 2007

Chitra Ganesh

Born 1975, Brooklyn, NY

Based in Brooklyn, NY

Award year: 2020

Sharon Hayes

Born 1970, Baltimore, MD

Based in Philadelphia, PA

Award year: 2013

Mary Heilmann

Born 1940, San Francisco, CA

Based in New York City and

Bridgehampton, NY

Award year: 2006

Claudia Joskowicz

Born 1968, Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Bolivia

Based in New York City and Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Bolivia

Award year: 2020

Nina Katchcadourian

Born 1968, Stanford, CA

Based in Brooklyn, NY, and Berlin, Germany

Award year: 2003

Elizabeth King

Born 1950, Ann Arbor, MI

Based in Richmond, VA

Award year: 2014

An-My Lê

Born 1960, Saigon, Vietnam

Based in Brooklyn, NY

Award year: 2006

Jungjin Lee

Born 1961, Seoul, South Korea

Based in New York City

Award year: 2011

Mary Lucier

Born 1944, Bucyrus, OH

Based in New York City and Cochecton, NY

Award year: 1997

Jennifer Wen Ma

Born 1973, Beijing, China

Based in New York City and Beijing, China

Award year: 2019

Suzanne McClelland

Born 1959, Jacksonville, FL

Based in Brooklyn and Orient, NY

Award year: 2010

Carrie Moyer

Born 1960, Detroit, MI

Based in Brooklyn, NY

Award year: 2009

Senga Nengudi

Born 1943, Chicago, IL

Based in Colorado Springs, CO

Award year: 2005

Judy Pfaff

Born 1946, London, UK

Based in Tivoli, NY

Award year: 2012

Rona Pondick

Born 1952, Brooklyn, NY

Based in New York City

Award year: 2016

Christy Rupp

Born 1949, Rochester, NY

Based in New York City and Hudson Valley, NY

Award year: 2008

Betye Saar

Born 1926, Los Angeles, CA

Based in Los Angeles, CA

Award year: 2004

Joyce J. Scott

Born 1948, Baltimore, MD

Based in Baltimore, MD

Award year: 1997

Beverly Semmes

Born 1958, Washington, DC

Based in New York City

Award year: 2014

Jeanne Silverthorne

Born 1950, Philadelphia, PA

Based in New York City

Award year: 1996

Diane Simpson

Born 1935, Joliet, IL

Based in Chicago, IL

Award year: 2019

Valeska Soares

Born 1957, Belo Horizonte, Brazil

Based in São Paulo, Brazil

Award year: 2005

Renée Stout

Born 1958, Junction City, KS

Based in Washington, DC

Award year: 1999

Julianne Swartz

Born 1967, Phoenix, AZ

Based in Stone Ridge, NY

Award year: 2015

Marie Watt

Born 1967, Seattle, WA

Based in Portland, OR

Award year: 2006

Carrie Mae Weems

Born 1953, Portland, OR

Based in Syracuse, NY

Award year: 2007

Lynne Yamamoto

Born 1961, Honolulu, HI

Based in Easthampton, MA

Award year: 1996

Carrie Yamaoka

Born 1957, Glen Cove, NY

Based in New York City

Award year: 2017

Anonymous Was A Woman: 

The First 25 Years

Courtesy Hirmer Verlag and Grey Art Museum, NYU

Publication

Book cover for "Anonymous Was A Woman." The title is written in black capital letters on a white background, with the word, "Woman" slightly faded.Anonymous Was A Woman: The First 25 Years is accompanied by a 392-page volume of the same name, which will be released prior to the opening of the exhibition. Co-published by Hirmer Verlag and the Grey Art Museum at New York University, the publication commemorates all 251 recipients of the award from 1996 through 2020, offering a visual and critical account of their work and careers. Featuring new essays by Nancy Princenthal, Vesela Sretenović, Valerie Cassel Oliver, Alexandra Schwartz, Cecilia Fajardo-Hill, Jenni Sorkin, and Gaby Collins-Fernández, as well as a roundtable discussion with founder Susan Unterberg, the book also unveils previously untold histories, underscoring the lasting influence of these artists. “The book, unlike the exhibition, functions as kind of a mini-history, which is exciting,” shares Gumpert. Available soon at the Grey Art Museum Bookstore, $55 retail, and online.

Anonymous Was A Woman: The First 25 Years is organized by the Grey Art Museum, New York University, and curated by Nancy Princenthal and Vesela Sretenović.

About the Curators

Nancy Princenthal is a Brooklyn-based writer whose book Agnes Martin: Her Life and Art (2015) received the 2016 PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography. She is also the author of Hannah Wilke (2010) and Unspeakable Acts: Women, Art, and Sexual Violence in the 1970s (2019), and co-author of Mothers of Invention: The Feminist Roots of Contemporary Art (2024). Princenthal has taught at Bard, Princeton, Yale, the School of Visual Arts, NYU’s Institute of Fine Arts, and elsewhere.

Vesela Sretenović is an art historian and curator of modern and contemporary art with a special interest in cross-disciplinary art practices and in bridging theoretical knowledge with hands-on experience. From 2009–23 she served as Director of Contemporary Art Initiatives and Academic Affairs at The Phillips Collection, Washington, DC. She is currently working as an independent curator and educator.

Grey Art Museum, New York University

18 Cooper Square, New York, NY 10003

greyartmuseum.nyu.edu

2001 Praemium Imperiale Laureates Announcement

2001 Praemium Imperiale Laureates

The recipients of the 13th Praemium Imperiale are:

Painting: Lee Ufan

Sculpture: Marta Pan

Architecture: Jean Nouvel

Music: Ornette Coleman

Theatre/Film: Arthur Miller

The artists are recognized and awarded for their achievements, for the impact they have had internationally on the arts, and for their role in enriching the global community. The five recipients each receive 15 million yen (c. $125,000), and a diploma and medal presented by governor of the Japan Art Association Prince Hitachi in an awards ceremony in Tokyo. The awards ceremony will be held on October 25.

The Praemium Imperiale is an annual award given by the Japan Art Association for global achievement in the arts. Since its foundation in 1989, it has become a mark of the highest international distinction. The 2001 laureates join a roster of 61 artists, including David Hockney, Willem de Kooning, Robert Rauschenberg, Christo and Jeanne-Claude, Anthony Caro, Frank Gehry, Renzo Piano, Leonard Bernstein, Mstislav Rostropovich, Ravi Shankar, Ingmar Bergman, Akira Kurosawa, Peter Brook.

2001 Praemium Imperiale Laureates

Painting: Lee Ufan

Japan-based Korean Lee Ufan has been a presence on the international art scene since the early 1970s. Profoundly rooted in philosophy of the East and West, his works offer his response to the basic problems of western art in the latter half of the 20th century. Lee's questioning of artistic methods and materials classes him among a large group of contemporaries; but his elementary forms and reduced processes and colors, his handling of time and space, connect him above all with Minimal Art and Conceptual Art. The genesis of his work is embedded in long meditative phases and profound concentration.

Sculpture: Marta Pan

Marta Pan has devoted her professional life to a pursuit of geometric simplicity, and to exploration of the themes of equilibrium and continuity. Her site-specific sculptures were pioneering in their attention to the overall landscape, to subtly changing light, and movements of water and wind. They were typically placed in natural environments and sculpture parks, but in recent years are found increasingly in urban settings as her interest shifts to urban scenery, and to the creation of public space environments. She has been very active outside of France, and her encounter with Japan, starting in 1969 with Floating Sculpture for the Hakone Open-Air Museum, was something like a mystical union. She now has about 25 major pieces in Japan that are appreciated for their abstract serenity and harmony with nature that perhaps recalls the essence of the traditional Japanese garden.

Architecture: Jean Nouvel

Jean Nouvel is recognized for the clarity, elegance that characterizes his work. Nouvel has created a stylistic language separate from that of modernism and post-modernism, and buildings that go beyond cultural constraints. He places great importance on harmonizing a building with its site and surroundings. Another theme unifying all of his projects is the beautiful interplay of transparency, opacity, shadow, and light. Perhaps the most well known example of this is his Institute du Monde Arab in Paris. Nouvel is considered one of the founders of the high-tech school of architecture. He uses materials such as aluminum, glass, stainless steel and concrete, but he adopts a softer, perhaps more poetic approach than his British colleagues. Nouvel's current projects include the new corporate headquarters for Dentsu Corporation at a site overlooking Tokyo Bay.

Music: Ornette Coleman

Most people think of Ornette Coleman as the revolutionary saxophonist who created "free jazz," but his explorations of the musical possibilities extend much beyond that and reveal a personal musical vocabulary free from prevailing conventions of harmonic, rhythmic, and melodic structures. Coleman's innovations, later to be known as "harmolodics," pointed out a new direction, and also established his place among a group of major 20th Century American composers such as Charlie Parker, Harry Partch, Charles Ives and John Cage. He describes Harmolodics as a system that allows every person to express their own emotions and ideas regardless of their languages, instruments, or role.

Theatre/Film: Arthur Miller

Arthur Miller has enriched the stage for over five decades. With his Death of a Salesman in 1949, Miller reached a universal audience and set a standard that marked him as a playwright for his time and for all time. The fate of the individual in society, the tragedy of the common man who loses his integrity due to social and economic pressures, the moral and political issues of our time, including the right to speak and think freely - these are the themes that have occupied Miller throughout his career. Arthur Miller continues to be a major force in world theater.

The Japan Art Association, Tokyo

www.praemiumimperiale.org