American artists Jennifer Packer and Marie Watt were named on Tuesday as the winners of this year’s Heinz Awards for the Arts.
Now in its 30th year, the award is distributed by the Pittsburgh-based Heinz Family Foundation and carries an unrestricted cash prize of $250,000 for each winner. Six recipients are named annually, two in each of the three categories—arts, the economy, and the environment—with the intention to “celebrate the vision and the spirit that produce achievements of lasting good.”
The two honored artists have distinct practices. The New York–based Packer is best known for her jewel-toned paintings whose subjects suggest a tremendous, if disquieted, inner world. Her acclaimed 2021 solo exhibition at the Whitney Museum centered Black figures that toed the line between figuration and abstraction.
“Storytelling is at the center of how we understand ourselves and everything else,” Packer said in a statement. “Most stories, regardless of their significance, are held solely in the body or in language, and they disappear when that body is lost. I care very deeply about many things and am certain that few will try to contain them in the way I know they deserve to be held.”
Watt is a citizen of the Seneca Nation (part of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy) with German-Scot ancestry. Her practice weaves together printmaking, textiles and sculpture to examine cultural legacies, foremost the place of early feminist Haudenosaunee teaching and Indigenous traditions in contemporary community. Her sculpture series “Blanket Stories” comprises monumental towering structures of folded blankets donated to the artist by local communities and each bearing a message that explains the importance of these objects to their original owners.
“I see blankets as living, storied objects. Many blankets, particularly wool blankets and quilts are passed down through generations,” Watt said in a statement. “We are received into this world in blankets and in many ways depart in a blanket, and in between we are constantly imprinting on them—worn areas, stained bits and mended parts are like beauty marks and part of the object’s history.”
