Catherine Telford Keogh, an artist residing in New York City, has been named the first recipient of the Guggenheim Museum’s new award for sculptors and installation artists. The Jack Galef Visual Arts Award, valued at $50,000, will be given every two years to recognize artists displaying “exceptional talent, innovation, depth, and vision.” This new accolade, funded by the Jack Galef Estate, arrives three years after the museum discontinued the Hugo Boss Prize, a $100,000 award given biennially from 1996 to 2020.
Guggenheim Director and CEO praised Telford Keogh, stating she “exemplifies the originality and depth this award seeks to champion.” Selected by a jury from the museum’s curatorial team, Telford Keogh’s practice is deeply rooted in research and process, examining the value, waste, and persistence within biological and commodified lifecycles. Originally from Toronto, she studied studio art and gender studies at the University of Waterloo before obtaining graduate degrees in Sculpture and Women, Gender, and Sexuality studies from Yale University.
In an email to Hyperallergic, Telford Keogh expressed, “I’m honored to receive this award, and the timing feels significant.” She is also a faculty member at Parsons School of Design at the New School, which recently faced substantial faculty and program reductions due to financial challenges. She highlighted the precarious conditions for creating and teaching, stressing the importance of institutions that embrace complexity and interdisciplinarity. The artist plans to use part of the prize to explore microbial life interactions with industrial pollutants at the Gowanus Canal Superfund Site.
Discussing her upcoming project, Telford Keogh told Hyperallergic, “The forthcoming project emerges from similar questions about what gets valued, what gets discarded, and what persists anyway.” She is intrigued by how microbial metabolism serves as a form of inscription, stating, “The work isn’t about ‘cleaning up.’ It’s about attending to forms of life that thrive in conditions we’ve written off, and asking which forms of life we deem worthy of attention.”
