Artnet’s Naomi Rea explains the Foundation for Contemporary Arts’s new Ellsworth Kelly Award, an honor that ICA recently received to curate a solo exhibition of Cauleen Smith’s work:
“‘Ellsworth Kelly was a great friend to FCA, contributing many paintings, drawings, and prints to our benefit exhibitions. His donations helped sustain FCA’s programs and support its growth over five decades. We are honored to receive this gift and proud to establish this new award in his name,’ Stacy Tenenbaum Stark, the FCA’s executive director, said in a statement. ‘We only wish Ellsworth were still with us to announce the award he helped to create,’ she added.
Each spring, a request for proposals for the Ellsworth Kelly Award will be issued to a small group of art institutions across the US. Winners are selected by FCA’s board of directors, which includes the artists Cecily Brown, Robert Gober, Jasper Johns, Julian Lethbridge, Glenn Ligon, and Kara Walker.
The inaugural award will be made to the Institute of Contemporary Art at the University of Pennsylvania, for a solo exhibition taking place in 2018 of filmmaker and artist Cauleen Smith, who was also a recipient of the FCA’s $30,000 Grants to Artists award in 2014.”