New $75K Grant Will Carry On Sam Gilliam’s Legacy
Dia Art Foundation partnered with the estate of the artist, who died in 2022 at the age of 88.
Dia Art Foundation has announced a new $75,000 grant in the name of Sam Gilliam, who died last June at the age of 88. Funded by the late artist's estate, the annual award will be distributed for the next 10 years and its first recipient will be announced in the spring of 2024.
Artists working in any medium and based anywhere in the world may receive the grant, though the foundation's announcement states that they must have made "significant contributions" to art and that the monetary award should be "transformative" for their careers. In addition to receiving $75,000, the grantee will present a public program at Dia Art Foundation, which has locations in Beacon, New York, and in Manhattan's Chelsea neighborhood.
Artists cannot apply for the award. They are instead selected by five jurors from names submitted by a panel of nominators. The members of the two selection committees have yet to be announced.
Best known for his sculptural "Drape" paintings, Gilliam left an outsized legacy when he died last year. As a Black artist working in abstraction, he diverged from the figurative practices of many of his Civil Rights-era contemporaries. In 2019, he showed his large-scale “Double Merge” (1968) at Dia’s Beacon location. The foundation co-acquired the work, consisting of two unstretched canvases hung from the ceiling and painted in vibrant pastel dyes, with the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston in 2021. Gilliam exhibited his work until the end of his life.
“Gilliam is one of the most important figures in American abstraction and key to developments of art in the 1960s and 70s at the core of Dia's program,” Dia curator Jordan Carter told Hyperallergic.
He explained that the artist’s draped canvases “bridge the language of abstraction with Postminimalism, making [Gilliam’s] work a critical touchstone in Dia's collection.”
In a statement shared with Hyperallergic, Gilliam’s wife Annie Gawlak said that grants allowed the artist to create a studio, leave his teaching position, and build a home for his family. “The wide-reaching impact of these forms of support and recognition were truly appreciated by Sam and by those most important to him,” Gawlak said.
“Exhibiting at Dia Beacon was a proud moment for Sam,” she continued. “And he would be delighted that his legacy will now continue there in such a powerful way.”
