Hazma Walker, writer/curator, and Polish video artist Artur Zmijewski are the winners of the 2010 Ordway Prize. The award, named for naturalist, philanthropist and arts patron Katherine Ordway, comes with an unrestricted $100,000 cash prize. It acknowledges the contributions of a mid-career curator/arts writer and artist whose work has had significant impact on the field of contemporary art, but has yet to receive broad public recognition. An international panel of Nominators and a Jury of leading arts world figures-led by Jennifer McSweeney, Director of Creative Link for the Arts, and Richard Flood, Chief Curator at the New Museum-selected the Ordway Prize recipients from a global pool of nominees.
Hazma Walker is the Director of Education and Associate Curator at The University of Chicago’s Renaissance Society and on the faculty of the Art Institute of Chicago. He has written for Artforum, New Art Examiner, Trans and catalogue essays on Darren Almond, Rebecca Morris, Giovanni Anselmo, and Katharina Grosse, among others. Notable past curatorial projects at the Renaissance Society include “Several Silences” (2009); “Katerina Seda” (2008); “All the Pretty Corpses” (2005); and “New Video, New Europe” (2004). He is currently planning the first US exhibition of the works of Antwerp native Anne-Mie can Kerckhoven in late 2010.
Artur Zmijewski was born in Warsaw, Poland, where he currently lives and works. His film and photographic work uncompromisingly examines contemporary moral issues, challenging out sense of what should be made visible and what should remain invisible. Zmijewski’s seminal work Repetition (2005) revisits the 1971 Stanford Prison Experiment, where volunteers are designated either and guards or prisoners and allowed to play out the situation. His latest film Sculpture Plein-air. Swiecie 2009 was presented as part of the Museum of Modern Art’s Project 91 series. In 2008, his film Oko za Oko (An Eye for an Eye) was included in the New Museum’s “After Nature” exhibition. He participated in Documenta 12 in 2007 and Manifesta 4 in 2002. He was selected to represent Poland at the 50th Venice Biennale. March 31, 2010
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