Kara Walker Named 2005 Larry Aldrich Award Recipient

RIDGEFIELD — The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum has selected Kara Walker the 2005 recipient of the prestigious Larry Aldrich Award.

The annual award honors an American artist whose work has had a significant impact on contemporary visual culture during the previous three years. An independent jury of artists, collectors, critics, curators and gallerists selects the winner.

Since 1995, the honoree has received $25,000 and the opportunity for an exhibition at The Aldrich Museum. Ms Walker has been invited to show a video of her work at the museum.

Kara Walker is best known for her installations of figural silhouettes made of cut black paper. Her narrative use of the silhouette, popular in the 18th and 19th centuries as women’s art, allows her to explore gender roles, sexuality and race issues in the antebellum south.

Since Ms Walker first began exhibiting her work in 1991, she has participated in numerous national and international exhibitions.

Her work has been exhibited at The Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, and The Whitney Museum of American Art.

A 1997 recipient of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Achievement Award, Ms Walker was the United States representative at the 2002 São Paolo Bienal in Brazil, and the recipient of the fourth annual Lucelia Artist Award from the Smithsonian American Art Museum in 2004.

Born in California, Kara Walker studied at the Atlanta College of Art and the Rhode Island School of Design. Ms Walker currently lives in New York, where she is on the faculty of the MFA program at Columbia University.