Sarah Lucas awarded Inaugural Hostetler/Wrigley Sculpture Award the New Museum has announced, 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 expansion designed by OMA / Shohei Shigematsu and Rem Koolhaas.
There is a gender gap in large-scale sculpture commissions, and in general institutions have been reticent to support ambitious projects by women artists. Our hope is that this new commission selected by an all-woman jury will pave the way for even more opportunities for women artists, and we are thrilled for the work to be presented on the new public plaza for all to see and enjoy.
Sue Hostetler Wrigley, Co-Founder of the Hosteler/Wrigley Foundation,
Lucas was selected by an all-artist jury comprised of Teresita Fernández, Joan Jonas, Julie Mehretu, Cindy Sherman, and Kiki Smith, and is the first of five recipients over ten years to be selected by a rotating jury. Her commission will open in tandem with the expanded New Museum.
The jury stated,
We selected Sarah Lucas’s proposal for its exuberance, vitality, and irreverence. Colorful, humorous, and radically joyful, Lucas’s proposal imagines an unconventional monument—an ‘unmonumental’ monument—celebrating women claiming space in public life. The title Venus Victoria is just a perfect omen.
Sarah Lucas’s selection as the first recipient of the Hostetler/Wrigley Sculpture Award follows her New Museum solo exhibition “Au Naturel” (2018), which travelled to the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2019). Recognized as one of Britain’s most significant contemporary artists, Lucas’s work spanning sculpture, photography, and installation has consistently been characterised by irreverent humour and the use of everyday ‘readymade’ objects—furniture, food, tabloid newspapers, tights, toilets, cigarettes—to conjure up corporeal fragments. The body, in its many guises, is Lucas’s prevailing subject.
She has exhibited internationally since coming to prominence in the 1990s with solo shows “Penis Nailed to a Board,” City Racing, London (1992) and “The Whole Joke,” Kingly Street, London (1992), followed by presentations at MoMA, New York (1993); Museum Boymans van Beunigen, Rotterdam (1996); Freud Museum, London (2000); and “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida” (with Angus Fairhurst and Damien Hirst) at Tate Britain, London (2004). In 2005, a touring retrospective took place at Kunsthalle Zürich, Kunstverein Hamburg, and Tate Liverpool. In addition to “Au Naturel” at the New Museum, major solo exhibitions in the last decade have included “Project 1: Sarah Lucas,” National Gallery of Australia, Canberra (2021); Red Brick Art Museum, Beijing (2019); “Sarah Lucas: Good Muse,” Legion of Honor, San Francisco (2017); “POWER IN WOMAN,” Sir John Soane’s Museum, London (2016), travelling to Humber Street Gallery, Hull (2017); and “I SCREAM DADDIO,” British Pavilion, 56th Venice International Art Biennale, Venice (2015). In addition, Lucas has also organised a number of group exhibitions, including “BIG WOMEN,” on view now featuring the work of more than 20 women artists at Firstsite, Colchester (2023). In fall 2023, Tate Britain will host a major career-spanning exhibition devoted to Sarah Lucas.
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. 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, Wangechi Mutu, Carol Rama, Faith Ringgold, Pipilotti Rist, Mika Rottenberg, Rosemarie Trockel, Kaari Upson, Andra Ursuta, and Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, among others. In 2016, the Museum established the Artemis Council of women philanthropists supporting women artists, of which Sue Hostetler Wrigley was a founding member.
ABOUT HOSTETLER/WRIGLEY FOUNDATION
The Hostetler/Wrigley Foundation is a contemporary philanthropic organization, providing resources to individuals and organizations with breakthrough ideas to help solve age-old, systemic problems through new ideas with a progressive focus. The foundation strives to help make this nation a place where everyone is represented, welcome to participate, and equally valued for their unique contributions. Founders Sue Hostetler Wrigley and Beau Wrigley are driven by the intent to expand access to all and drive parity in the United States, so everyone has a fair chance at building a better future. More information at hwfoundation.org
ABOUT NEW MUSEUM
The New Museum is the only museum in New York City exclusively devoted to contemporary art. Founded in 1977, the New Museum is a center for exhibitions, information, and documentation about living artists from around the world. From its beginnings as a one-room office on Hudson Street to the inauguration of its first freestanding building on the Bowery designed by SANAA in 2007, the New Museum continues to be a place of experimentation and a hub of new art and new ideas.
