DIA ANNOUNCES $75,000 SAM GILLIAM AWARD
The Dia Foundation has announced the inauguration of the Sam Gilliam Award, to be bestowed annually for the next ten years. Beginning in spring 2024, the $75,000 prize will be presented to an artist “residing anywhere in the world, who has made a significant contribution to any medium of art and for whom receiving the award would be transformative,” according to the press release. A group of invited international nominators will compile a long list, from which a panel of five jurors will choose a winner.
The prize is funded by the Sam Gilliam Estate and by Annie Gawlak, the artist’s widow. Gilliam (1933–2022) is known for liberating the canvas from the frame and instead draping it across various supports, including walls, or heaping it on the floor. Dia in 2021 acquired his Double Merge of 1968, a site-specific, room-spanning work of suspended canvases that responds to the industrial architecture of Dia Beacon, a repurposed printing plant built by Nabisco in 1929.
Gawlak noted that grants similar the Sam Gilliam Award had proved crucial to her husband’s career, arriving at “pivotal” moments and allowing him to “establish a studio, leave his teaching position, and create a home for his family.” In a statement, she named Dia as “an institution that has offered such significant support for artists over the years,” further affirming that “exhibiting at Dia Beacon was a proud moment for Sam, and he would be delighted that his legacy will now continue there in such a powerful way.”
“We are deeply honored that Annie Gawlak . . . has selected Dia to administer this significant award,” said Dia director Jessica Morgan. “Gilliam was truly one of the most important figures in American abstract art, as well as notoriously generous and supportive of his fellow artists. The Sam Gilliam Award extends his vital legacy through the next generation of artists.”
