The Wexner Center for the Arts will award the 13th Wexner Prize to groundbreaking filmmaker Spike Lee, who will come to Columbus in February to accept the award. The $50,000 Prize is given to a contemporary artist in any field who has been consistently original, influential and challenging to convention, with artists nominated by the Wexner Center’s International Arts Advisory Council.
This marks the first award in Lee’s career from a multidisciplinary arts center. He will be at the Wexner Center Feb. 11 and 12 for the ceremony, and to participate in a variety of events for Wexner Center members, Ohio State students, area teens and the general public (details on these events to be announced).
“Since bursting on the scene in 1986 with his quirky and irreverent movie She’s Gotta Have It, Spike Lee has been among the most significant voices in American film. With a fierce commitment to capturing and conveying the lived experiences of African Americans, he brings to all his projects a unique and independent vision combined with an unerring ‘street savvy.’ With this Prize—his first from a multidisciplinary arts center—we honor Lee’s work in feature film, documentaries, television movies, music video, and even commercials," says Sherri Geldin, Wexner Center director.
“Spike Lee exemplifies what the Wexner Prize was created to celebrate: a bold creative spirit who is unafraid to provoke and challenge us. He tests the American mind, and its attitudes, assumptions and values, and in doing so has advanced American cinema in remarkable ways. We are thrilled to award the 13th Wexner Prize to Spike Lee," adds Leslie H. Wexner, chair of the Wexner Center Foundation Board of Trustees.
In the past two decades, Lee has worked in a variety of film genres, from coming-of-age (1994’s Crooklyn) to biopics (1992’s Malcolm X) to documentaries (2006’s When the Levees Broke, a devastating look at the effects of Hurricane Katrina) to musicals (1988’s School Daze), and infused each with his inimitable style and vibrant, electric filmmaking technique. In 1989 Lee was nominated for a Best Screenplay Academy Award for his landmark Do the Right Thing. Currently, he is working on a film based on James McBride’s novel Miracle of St. Anna, about black soldiers who fought in World War II. Lee will also be making his Broadway directorial debut in the spring with an adaptation of Billy Wilder’s Stalag 17.
The Wexner Prize is awarded annually and is funded by the Wexner Center Foundation through a gift from Abigail and Leslie H. Wexner, chairman of the Wexner Center Foundation and chairman and founder of Limited Brands. As with past Prize recipients, Spike Lee was nominated by the Wexner Center's cross-disciplinary International Arts Advisory
Council and selected to receive the Prize by the trustees of the Wexner Center Foundation. A commemorative sculpture designed by artist Jim Dine accompanies the award. In accepting the prize, Spike Lee joins this distinguished group of past recipients:
PAST WEXNER PRIZE RECIPIENTS
Peter Brook, theater director (1992)
John Cage, composer/musician, with Merce Cunningham, choreographer (1993)
Bruce Nauman, visual artist (1994)
Yvonne Rainer, choreographer and filmmaker (1995)
Martin Scorsese, filmmaker (1996–1997)
Gerhard Richter, painter (1998)
Louise Bourgeois, visual artist (1999)
Robert Rauschenberg, visual artist (2000)
Renzo Piano, architect (2001)
William Forsythe, choreographer (2002)
Issey Miyake, designer (2004)
Bill T. Jones, choreographer (2005)
The International Arts Advisory Council includes the following members:
Kutlug Ataman, video and installation artist, Istanbul
Petra Blaisse, landscape and interior designer, Amsterdam
Iwona Blazwick, director, Whitechapel Art Gallery, London
Anne Bogart, artistic director and founder, The SITI Company (Saratoga International Theater Institute), New York
Ken Brecher, executive director, Sundance Institute, Los Angeles
Ian Buruma, Henry R. Luce Professor in Human Rights, Democracy, and New Media, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York
Maria de Corral, independent curator and art critic; director, 51st Venice Biennale, Madrid
Peter Gelb, general manager, The Metropolitan Opera, New York
Susanne Ghez, director, The Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago, Chicago
Yuko Hasegawa, chief curator, Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo
Philip Kaufman, film director, San Francisco
Barbara Kruger, artist and writer specializing in media and contemporary visual culture, New York
Phillip Lopate, writer and critic; professor, Hofstra University, New York
Bruce Mau, graphic designer, Bruce Mau Design, Toronto
Josiah McElheny, visual artist, New York
Joseph Melillo, executive producer, Brooklyn Academy of Music, Brooklyn
Bebe Miller, choreographer, Bebe Miller Company, New York; professor, Ohio State Department of Dance
Michael Morris, co-director, Artangel, and director, Cultural Industry, London
Jonathan Sehring, president, IFC Entertainment, New York
Catharine R. Stimpson, dean, New York University Graduate School of Arts and Science; former director, MacArthur Fellows Program, New York
Lynne Tillman, novelist, short story writer, and critic, New York
Billie Tsien, principal, Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects, New York
John Vinci, architect and installation designer, Chicago
John Waters, filmmaker, Baltimore and New York
Lawrence Weschler, writer; director, New York University Institute for Humanities, New York