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The Gwendolyn Knight & Jacob Lawrence Prize

Two visitors holding hands walk through a gallery with Lauren Halsey's large, bright sculptures at the center.

About

The Seattle Art Museum’s Gwendolyn Knight and Jacob Lawrence Prize is awarded biennially to an early to mid-career career Black artist, defined loosely as an artist in the first decade of their career who demonstrates artistic commitment and great promise.

The prestigious award recognizes artists whose prominence is rising in the contemporary art world, and who have already made important contributions to the visual arts. Past prize recipients are now leaders in contemporary artistic practices.

Gwendolyn Knight (1913–2005) and Jacob Lawrence (1917–2000) were renowned artists and dedicated teachers who lived and worked in Seattle for much of their lives and recognized the need for Black artists to have support and advocacy. The prize was founded in honor of these two artists and continues their legacy, providing inspiration for young artists and scholarship in the field of art history. Funding for the prize and exhibition is provided by the Gwendolyn Knight Lawrence and Jacob Lawrence Endowment and generous support from the Jacob and Gwendolyn Lawrence Foundation.

What to know

The selected artist is awarded a solo exhibition at SAM and receives an unrestricted $15,000 award to further their artistic practice.

The nomination process is anonymous. Nominations are collected from a rotating national pool of highly regarded curators, scholars, artists, and arts leaders. Each nominator is invited to provide a short list of artists whose work demonstrates excellence in execution and vision. Sandra Jackson-Dumont, Director and CEO of Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, led the anonymous nomination process this year. Since 2009, she was the founding curator of the prize’s exhibitions. Jackson-Dumont was formerly the Frederick P. and Sandra P. Rose Chairman of Education at the Metropolitan Museum of Art; prior to that, she was SAM’s former Deputy Director for Education and Public Programs and Adjunct Curator in Modern and Contemporary Art.

Current Gwendolyn Knight and
Jacob Lawrence Prize winner

A person with long, textured hair wears a plaid fur coat and several rings, looking confidently at the camera against a plain white background. — Photo: Brigitte Lacombe

Karon Davis

Karon Davis (b. 1977, Reno, Nevada) creates sculptures and multimedia installations that touch on issues of history, race, and violence in the United States, using materials as varied as plaster strips, chicken wire, glass, and readymade objects. Drawing on her background in theater and film, Davis creates haunting tableaux inhabited by protagonists both historical and imagined. The figures are created using the artist’s unique plaster method, amalgamations of life-size casts taken from friends and family as well as her own body. The material reflects her longtime interest in ancient Egyptian mummification practices, using wrapping to memorialize different bodies and their complex histories.

Davis’ work is in the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (NY); the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (CA); the Pérez Art Museum, Miami (FL); the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (CA); the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (TX); the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (CA); the Rubell Museum, Miami (FL); the Brooklyn Museum (NY); The Studio Museum in Harlem (NY); and MAC3, Los Angeles (CA) among others. In 2017 Davis was the recipient of The Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Biennial Grant.