PVAMU Art Curator Lauren Kelley Among First to be Awarded the New Museum Altoids Award

Friday, April 11, 2008

New York, NY --(March 25)--The New Museum and Altoids, the Curiously Strong Mints®, announced the first winners of The Altoids Award. Lauren Kelley, curator of the Prairie View A&M University Fourth Floor Art Gallery, will receive a $25,000 cash prize of a total $100,000 awarded to three other artists.

“I’m thrilled to have been selected as one of the first artists to receive this amazing award. My goal is to share my work with as many people as possible. However it’s always exciting to be recognized by fellow artists,” states Kelley, who first arrived to PVAMU in 2003.

Celebrated as a truly unique exploration of American emerging art, the Altoids Award prize will be awarded biennially by the New Museum and Altoids to four artists nominated and selected by a panel comprised entirely of other artists.



The Award recipients are each given a $25,000 cash prize, as well as a joint exhibition organized by Massimiliano Gioni, director of Special Exhibitions at the New Museum, on view from June 25 through Oct. 12. This will offer Kelley and the other artists their earliest exposure to a broad international museum audience. Kelley’s contribution to the exhibit will feature an animated video, which explores black female and male relationships.

Working in different media, spanning performance to video and drawing, Kelley and the other three winners offer a vivid picture of current American art and a complex view of America itself. The artists’ artwork deals with forms of storytelling, and in their individual styles they all explore the ways people come together to form groups based on identity, collaboration, family ties and politics.

“Altoids has long been a key advocate of contemporary artists and a supporter of the New Museum. The Altoids Award is a significant way for Altoids and the Museum to expand their recognition of new American talent. For so many of these artists, this is a life-changing opportunity, and that is exactly what we are here for—to champion emerging artists and to consistently offer our audiences the chance to experience new art and new ideas from a variety of perspectives,” said Lisa Phillips, Toby Devan Lewis Director, New Museum.

The Altoids Award is based on a unique selection process that calls for a geographically and stylistically diverse group of ten artists to each nominate up to five emerging artists they have identified as producing especially innovative, unusual and powerful works. The nominators themselves are selected for their proven commitment to publicly supporting the artistic community through writing, teaching, organizing exhibitions, running alternative spaces, or simply promoting their colleagues.

About Altoids:

Altoids has worked to advance the careers of emerging artists since 1998. In addition to its ongoing support for numerous contemporary art organizations and exhibitions, the Altoids Curiously Strong Collection supports today’s emerging artistic talent by providing meaningful exposure and recognition in a public art forum. In 2000, Altoids donated its entire Curiously Strong Collection, as well as all subsequent works, to the New Museum, adding significantly to the Museum’s holdings and marking its first-ever acceptance of a corporate collection. During the past seven years, Altoids has donated more than 155 extraordinary works that represent an innovative and adventurous approach to visual arts and patronage to the New Museum’s permanent collection. Through The Altoids Award, the New Museum and Altoids will continue to nurture their long-standing partnership and commitment to undiscovered artists.

About The New Museum:

Founded in 1977, the New Museum is the first and only contemporary art museum in New York City and among the most respected internationally, with a curatorial program unrivaled in the United States in its global scope and adventurousness. With the inauguration of our new, state-of-the-art building on the Bowery, the New Museum is the destination for new art and new ideas.

About Prairie View A&M University:

Ranked the only Texas school on Black Enterprise magazine’s 2006 list of “Top 50 Colleges and Universities for African-Americans,” Prairie View A&M University was founded in 1876 and is the second-oldest public institution of higher education in Texas. With an established reputation for producing engineers, nurses and educators, PVAMU offers baccalaureate degrees in 50 academic majors, 37 master’s degrees and four doctoral degree programs through nine colleges and schools. A member of The Texas A&M University System, the university is dedicated to fulfilling its land-grant mission of achieving excellence in teaching, research and service. During the university’s 132 year history, nearly 48,000 academic degrees have been awarded. For more information regarding PVAMU, visit www.pvamu.edu.