ASPEN ART MUSEUM ANNOUNCES RENOWNED US CONTEMPORARY ARTIST TERESITA FERNÁNDEZ AS 2013 ASPEN AWARD FOR ART HONOREE

AWARD TO BE PRESENTED DURING MUSEUM’S NINTH ANNUAL ARTCRUSH GALA ON FRIDAY, AUGUST 2, 2013

ASPEN, CO—The Aspen Art Museum is proud to announce the selection of renowned contemporary artist Teresita Fernández as the recipient of the museum’s 2013 Aspen Award for Art. The award will be presented on Friday, August 2, 2013, during the museum’s 9th annual ArtCrush summer benefit gala. The Aspen Award for Art is given each year to an artist who has made a significant contribution to the field of contemporary art. Past artist-honorees are: Tom Sachs (2012), Roni Horn (2011), Marilyn Minter (2010), Fred Tomaselli (2009), Ed Ruscha (2008), Jim Hodges (2007), Tony Feher (2006), and Richard Tuttle (2005).

On Friday, August 2, 2013, the Aspen Art Museum will host its annual summer benefit gala, with over 350 of the world’s top art collectors, wine connoisseurs, artists, gallery owners, curators, celebrities, and global business leaders, who will come together in Aspen for three days of events to celebrate the Aspen Art Museum. The hugely successful 2012 AAM ArtCrush summer benefit raised $1.8 million to fund the Museum’s educational programming and exhibitions. The ten-lot 2012 ArtCrush Live Auction of contemporary art raised a total of $770,000 and the seventy-lot Silent Auction art auction garnered an additional $774,000. ArtCrush is chaired by veteran Chair and AAM National Council member Amy Phelan.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Teresita Fernández was born in Miami in 1968 and currently lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. She is the recipient of a 2005 MacArthur Fellowship, a Louis Comfort Tiffany Biennial Award, an American Academy in Rome Fellowship, and a National Endowment for the Arts Artist’s Grant. In 2011, President Obama appointed Fernández to serve on the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts, a federal panel that advises the President, Congress and governmental agencies on national matters of design and aesthetics.

Fernández is best known for her prominent public sculptures and unconventional use of materials. Her work is characterized by an interest in perception and the natural world. Diverse in materials and wide-ranging conceptually, Fernández creates experiential, large-scale works that are often inspired by landscape and place as well as diverse historical and cultural references. As one ARTFORUM writer put it in a review of the artist’s 2010 exhibition at the Blanton Museum of Art in Austin, TX, her works focus on “an interest in opacity, transparency and the psychology of looking.”

Fernández has been commissioned to create a number of site-specific sculptural installations, including the prestigious Bennesee Art site in Naoshima, Japan (2009), Public Art Fund for Madison Square Park (2001), Museum of Modern Art, New York (2000), and the permanent installation Starfield at the Dallas Cowboys Stadium, Texas (2008-2010). Fernández was the youngest artist commissioned by the Seattle Art Museum for the Olympic Sculpture Park. Her permanent, site-specific artwork Seattle Cloud Cover (2006) allows visitors to walk through a covered skyway while viewing the city’s skyline through optically shifting multicolored glass. Fernández’s work is included in numerous private collections, as well as the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; St. Louis Museum of Contemporary Art; MoCA Miami; Miami Art Museum; The Walker Art Center in Minneapolis; and Albright-Knox Gallery in Buffalo, NY, among others. She has exhibited widely since 1993, including solo exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art and Miami Art Museum, Miami; Modern Art Museum in Fort Worth; Museum of Contemporary Art, Cleveland; Castello di Rivoli, Turin; Site Santa Fe, NM; Fabric Workshop and Museum and the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia; Artpace, San Antonio; The Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, DC; and internationally at Place Vendome, Paris; Singapore Tyler Print Institute; and Centro de Arte Contemporáneo de Málaga, Spain, among others.

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The Aspen Art Museum is a non-collecting institution presenting the newest, most important evolutions in international contemporary art. Our innovative and timely exhibitions, education and public programs, immersive activities, and community happenings actively engage audiences in thought-provoking experiences of art, culture, and society.
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ASPEN ART MUSEUM
590 North Mill Street – Aspen, CO 81611

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AAM ADMISSION IS FREE courtesy of Amy and John Phelan
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CONTACT:
Jeff Murcko
Communications Director
970-925-8050 X25
jmurcko@aspenartmuseum.org