Los Angeles–based artist Alison Saar has been named the 2025 recipient of the David C. Driskell Prize, awarded annually by the High Museum of Art in Atlanta. The prize honors Saar’s contributions to African American art and coincides with the award’s 20th anniversary. Saar will be honored at the annual Driskell Gala on September 20th in Atlanta.
Established in 2005, the Driskell Prize alternates each year between honoring an artist and an art historian. It carries a $50,000 unrestricted cash award—doubled from $25,000 in 2020—to support the recipient’s practice. Past winners have included Rashid Johnson in 2012, Mark Bradford in 2016, Amy Sherald in 2018, and Ebony G. Patterson in 2023. Randall Suffolk, director of the High Museum, noted that it was fitting to award the prize to Saar on its 20th anniversary because her work “exemplifies what the award has come to signify.”
“I came to honor David Driskell not only as a brilliant historian and artist, but also as a dear friend,” Saar said in a press statement. “I’m especially grateful to receive this award from the High Museum, which, in 1993, commissioned me to create the exhibition ‘Fertile Ground.’ That exhibition was one of my first solo museum shows and later toured many museums across the United States.”
Born to artist Betye Saar in Los Angeles in 1956, the younger Saar continues to live and work in the city. Her sculptures and installations often explore the African diaspora and Black women’s identity, drawing influence from African, Caribbean, and American traditions. Among her most recognized public artworks is Swing Low, a memorial to Harriet Tubman in South Harlem that in 2008 became New York’s first public monument to an African American woman.
“Receiving this prize allows me to continue creating works that confront the dehumanizing history of enslaved African Americans and highlight how the legacy of those injustices continues to affect Black communities today,” Saar said. “It gives me the freedom to make art that speaks to our painful past, celebrates our strength and beauty in the present, and envisions a powerful and glorious future.”
Saar’s work is held in the permanent collections of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Studio Museum in Harlem, and the Whitney Museum of American Art.
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