Cannupa Hanska Luger wins the Inaugural Burke Prize

The Museum of Arts and Design (MAD) is proud to announce Cannupa Hanska Luger as the winner of the inaugural Burke Prize for contemporary craft. Named for craft collectors Marian and Russell Burke, the prize constitutes an unrestricted award in the amount of USD 50,000, given annually to an artist age 45 or under working in glass, fiber, clay, metal, or wood. Luger is the first recipient of the Burke Prize, which recognizes the achievements of a young artist working in and advancing the media and disciplines that shaped the American studio craft movement for which the Museum was founded.

A multidisciplinary artist of Mandan, Hidatsa, Arikara, Lakota, Austrian, and Norwegian descent, Cannupa Hanska Luger (United States, b. 1979) was raised on the Standing Rock Reservation in North Dakota. Now based in Glorieta, New Mexico, he interweaves performance and political action to create monumental installations that communicate stories about 21st-century indigeneity. His work includes community-based projects focused on issues facing indigenous peoples in the US and Canada, as exemplified by Mirror Shield Project (2016) and Every One (2018), both of which began as instructional videos. In the case of Mirror Shield Project, Luger taught viewers how to make mirror shields out of plywood and reflective Mylar, and invited them to send the shields to Standing Rock for use in the 2016 demonstrations against the Dakota Access Pipeline. For the installation Every One, he invited communities across the US and Canada to create and donate two-inch clay beads, which he fired, stained, and strung together to make a monumental curtain. Each of the beads is a memorial to one of the four thousand cases of missing and murdered indigenous female, queer, and trans members in Canada.

“The Burke Prize is a complete honor to receive, and it has provided critical validation to the direction my practice is heading,” said Luger. “Receiving this award supports the future of my work in creating monumental installations which emerge from diverse communal engagements. I am grateful, and I look forward to what is next.”

In conjunction with the award, MAD is featuring works by the winner and finalists in the exhibition The Burke Prize 2018: The Future of Craft Part 2, on view through March 17, 2019. Representing nine states and thirteen cities across the United States, the winner and the fifteen finalists comprise an ethnically and racially diverse group with an equitable gender breakdown.

The Burke Prize finalists and winner are determined by an annual jury of professionals in the fields of art, craft, and design, following an open application process. The 2019 Burke Prize application period will open on November 7, 2018.

About the Museum of Arts and Design
The Museum of Arts and Design (MAD) champions contemporary makers across creative fields and presents the work of artists, designers, and artisans who apply the highest level of ingenuity and skill. Since the Museum’s founding in 1956 by philanthropist and visionary Aileen Osborn Webb, MAD has celebrated all facets of making and the creative processes by which materials are transformed, from traditional techniques to cutting-edge technologies. Today, the Museum’s curatorial program builds upon a rich history of exhibitions that emphasize a cross-disciplinary approach to art and design, and reveals the workmanship behind the objects and environments that shape our everyday lives. MAD provides an international platform for practitioners who are influencing the direction of cultural production and driving 21st-century innovation, and fosters a participatory setting for visitors to have direct encounters with skilled making and compelling works of art and design.