Jennie C. Jones and Gala Porras-Kim have been announced as the 2024 recipients of the Heinz Award for the Arts . The unrestricted $250,000 cash prize, given annually since 1993 by the Pittsburgh-based Heinz Family Foundation to honor individuals making major contributions in the arts, is one of the world’s largest.
Past awardees include ceramicist Roberto Lugo, filmmaker Cauleen Smith, Conceptual artist Sanford Biggers, cartoonist Roz Chast, Pulitzer Prize–winning poet Rita Dove, and interdisciplinary artist Ralph Lemon. The Cincinnati-born Jones, who lives and works in Hudson, New York, is celebrated for her work responding to both the legacies of modernism and Minimalism and to African American literary and musical traditions, with jazz as a particular focus. Her explorations of these themes center around painting, sculpture, and assemblage, and frequently incorporate sound and the apparatus of musicmaking.
Jones was recently awarded the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Rooftop Commission : Her installation there next summer is expected to comprise sculptures that can work as instruments. “Jennie’s work defies established genres, interlacing elements of sound, space, color and objects in ways that are profoundly moving,” said foundation chairperson Teresa Heinz in a statement. “Her layered works are immersive, inviting us to reflect and ponder while experiencing moments of subtle beauty and meaning.
” Porras-Kim, who was born in Bogotá and lives and works in Los Angeles, is renowned for labor-intensive, process-driven works investigating the fields of linguistics, history, and conservation, with a focus on institutional critique. Through a practice that embraces research, drawing, sculpture, and installation, she unpacks the way in which the perception of objects changes over time and in relation to their surroundings, as well as the way in which the presence of said objects affects the spaces in which they reside. An exhibition of Porras-Kim’s work centered on the Carnegie Museum of Art’s caretaking of its collection will go on view at the Pittsburgh institution this spring.
“It is an honor to present Gala with the Heinz Award for the Arts, not only for her work as a gifted artist and researcher, but also as a powerful force calling us to recognize that how we understand and think about history, culture, and the preservation and display of historic objects has been heavily influenced by the museums and galleries that we treasure,” said Heinz in a statement. “Gala engages deeply with these institutions, calling them to examine their practices of acquisition, display and narrative, and to question ownership of Indigenous objects.”.
