The Vera List Center for Art and Politics is honored to announce the recipient of the 2022–2024 Jane Lombard Prize for Art and Social Justice is Australian Aboriginal arts collective proppaNOW for the significance and impact of their collective activities since 2003. Current members include Vernon Ah Kee, Tony Albert, Richard Bell, Megan Cope, Jennifer Herd, and Gordon Hookey who are all established artists and well respected in their own right. The late founding member Laurie Nilsen is today represented by his daughter, Lily Eather.
The four finalists for the Prize are also appointed as 2022–2024 Jane Lombard Fellows. They are Colectivo Cherani for Cherán Cultural Center; Khalil Rabah for The Palestinian Museum of Natural History and Humankind; KUNCI Study Forum & Collective for School of Improper Education (SoIE); and The Africa Cluster of the Another Roadmap School (ARAC).
The selection of proppaNOW was made unanimously by a jury chaired by Simone Leigh, and comprising Carin Kuoni, Cuauhtémoc Medina, Wanda Nanibush, and Rasha Salti. In their jury citation they comment:
“We are honored to bestow the 2022–2024 Jane Lombard Prize for Art and Social Justice on proppaNOW, the First Nations artist collective from Brisbane, Australia. Founded in 2003 to combat the invisibility of urban Aboriginal contemporary art that addresses the issues of our time, it has broken with expectations of what is proper (‘proppa’) in Aboriginal art; created a new sovereign space for First Nations artists internationally outside colonial stereotypes, desires for authenticity, and capitalist capitulations; and opened new political imaginaries.”
International in scope, the Jane Lombard Prize for Art and Social Justice honors outstanding achievements in art and politics, and recognizes an experienced artist or group of artists for a project that engages political themes and advances social justice in profound and visionary ways. The Jane Lombard Prize is awarded on the basis of a project’s long-term impact, boldness, and artistic excellence, and considered in relation to the Vera List Center’s two-year research theme. For this prize cycle, the 2022–2024 biennial focus is Correction*.
“We are thrilled to honor proppaNOW for work that has changed the paradigms for how we see, learn of, teach, and support Indigenous art throughout the world” said Carin Kuoni, Senior Director and Chief Curator of Vera List Center for Art and Politics. “As the Vera List Center turns 30 and reflects on the multiple needs for correction—including reparations or course correction—it will be enormously helpful and influential for The New School students and faculty as well as our publics to have proppaNOW’s exemplary work exhibited in New York next fall.”
The Prize carries a cash award of 25,000 USD and a limited edition artwork commissioned from Yoko Ono. Additionally, emphasis is placed on the prize as a catalyst for a series of in-depth activities over two years that spawn new scholarship and strengthen teaching and learning opportunities on the role of the arts in advancing social justice. Through a presentation of the prize-winning project in October 2023, the concurrent Vera List Center Forum 2023, publications, and other means for dissemination, the Vera List Center aims to foster an ongoing public conversation that engages audiences in New York City, nationally and around the world.
An essential part of the Jane Lombard Prize is the cohort of Jane Lombard Fellows, finalists for the prize who will participate in the Vera List Center Forum 2023. Part of a short-term residency in New York, this is an opportunity not only to present their projects to new audiences and further discourse around their politically salient work, but also to connect with the other fellows and their communities.
The inaugural Jane Lombard Prize was awarded in 2012 to Theaster Gates for The Dorchester Projects, the second in 2014 to Abounaddara for their weekly films documenting contemporary life during the Syrian revolution, the third in 2016 to Brazilian artist Maria Thereza Alves for her twenty-year project Seeds of Change, which is the subject of a forthcoming monograph; the fourth to the Pan-African collective Chimurenga for their Pan-African Space Station, and most recently to Avni Sethi for Conflictorium.
The Jane Lombard Prize for Art and Politics is endowed with a gift from Jane Lombard. It was launched in 2008 by Prize Founding Supporters James Keith Brown and Eric Diefenbach, Elizabeth R. Hilpman and Byron Tucker, Jane Lombard, Joshua Mack, and The New School.
