Asia Society Announces Winners of Frankenthaler Climate Art Awards on the Occasion of Coal + Ice

NEW YORK & WASHINGTON DC; March 30, 2022—Asia Society and the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation announced today the winners of the Frankenthaler Climate Art Awards, recognizing visual artists currently enrolled in or recently graduated from MFA programs in the United States whose work directly addresses the climate crisis. Designed to encourage action on climate change amongst the next generation of visual artists, the awards are being granted to:

Maurício Chades (School of the Art Institute of Chicago),

Douglas Tolman (University of Utah), and

Alexa Velez (Washington University in St. Louis).

The $15,000 awards will be conferred to each winner following a special COAL + ICE panel discussion, exploring how the arts can be the impetus for climate action, on Saturday, April 2, 2022, at the Phillips Collection as part of the museum’s ongoing “Artists of Conscience” series.

The three winners were selected from a shortlist of 13 semifinalists by a jury comprised of leaders from four of the collaborating institutions:

Melissa Chiu, Director, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden;

Molly Donovan, Curator of Contemporary Art, National Gallery of Art;

Dorothy Kosinski, Vrandenburg Director & CEO, The Phillips Collection; and

Michelle Yun Mapplethorpe, Vice President for Global Artistic Programs at Asia Society and Director of Asia Society Museum, New York.

In addition to the three winners, the following artists were shortlisted for the award:

Melanie Bernier, Tyler School of Art and Architecture at Temple University

Sarah Brophy, School of the Art Institute of Chicago

Linnéa Gad, Columbia University School of the Arts

Char Jeré, Columbia University School of the Arts

Sue Montoya, University of Florida

Brian Patterson, Columbia University School of the Arts

Tiare Ribeaux (with collaborator Jody Stillwater), University of California, Berkeley

Anna Rotty, University of New Mexico

Kathy Sirico, San Francisco Art Institute

Vivian Vivas, Columbia University School of the Arts

A full overview of winning and shortlisted projects can be found at ClimateArtAwards.org.

Details about the awards, the ceremony, the jury and its citation, and collaborating partners may be found in the full press release.