Awards
2010 Art Journal Award
Joanna Grabski, “Urban Claims and Visual Sources in the Making of Dakar’s Art World City” (Spring 2009)
Joanna Grabski (photograph by Jacqueline Pelasky, December 2009)
The Art Journal Award for 2010 is presented to Joanna Grabski for her fascinating and ambitious essay, “Urban Claims and Visual Sources in the Making of Dakar’s Art World City,” published in the Spring 2009 issue. Rich in first-hand information from her years of experience with the artists and institutions that make up this West African metropolis, the author, understanding the Senegalese capital as site for innovative art practices, research, and international exchange, effectively demonstrates that in the hands of the city’s artists found objects have produced artworks and environments that meld their histories with languages of local form that reverberate with each other to piercing levels of impact. Moreover, Grabski articulates how such activity produces dramatic shifts in pedagogical paradigms in the city’s art institutions, which, in turn, foreground visual practices as urban phenomena.
Jury: Steven Nelson, University of California, Los Angeles, chair; Alexander Alberro, Barnard College; and Ann Gibson, University of Delaware.
