Tonight, world-renowned photographer Annie Leibovitz will discuss her work with friend and colleague Jann S. Wenner, the founder, publisher, and editor of Rolling Stone magazine, live in front of those smart and lucky enough to take a seat in Mershon Auditorium at the Wexner Center. The action will get underway at 5:30 p.m. The galleries will be open until 8:00 p.m., and your ticket to the conversation grants you free gallery admission.
Leibovitz is back in town in order to accept the 14th Wexner Prize. The prestigious Wexner Prize, first awarded in 1992, recognizes living artists working in any medium or discipline whose achievements reflect bold originality, innovation, and creative excellence. Prize recipients are highly influential, not only within their own field or discipline but across multiple artistic practices. The $50,000 prize is funded by the Wexner Center Foundation through a gift from Leslie H. Wexner, chairman of the Wexner Center Foundation and chairman and founder of Limited Brands, and his wife Abigail Wexner, also a trustee.
“Artistic, adventurous, curious, and deeply committed to creative experimentation, Annie Leibovitz embodies the very ideals of the Wexner Center for the Arts and the prize. She has delved into myriad facets of American culture with her camera over the last 40-plus years, giving us a fresh perspective on people at the forefront of their respective fields. On the occasion of the exhibition of her work at the Wexner Center this fall, we are thrilled to award the 14th Wexner Prize to Leibovitz,” Mr. Wexner commented.
If you have yet to make it to the Wexner Center for the exciting exhibit of her entire Master Set of 156 images, together in a museum setting for the first time, you are missing out. You can learn more about the exhibit HERE.
“Working with Annie over the last 15 months to produce her exhibition at the Wex, her ‘candidacy’ for the prize quite naturally emerged with all the clarity and authority of one of her photographs. Leibovitz is not simply among our foremost image makers, she has essentially created a new form of portraiture for our time. Utterly original, savvy yet sensitive, cunning yet compassionate, her work has come to be synonymous with contemporary American culture and inextricably identified with those who shape and advance it. The more than 200 Leibovitz photographs on view at the Wexner Center this fall attest to her stunning achievement across more than 40 years of relentless photographic pursuit. That these works continue to so profoundly move us decades after they were shot is but one measure of her mastery,” Wexner Center Director Sherri Geldin noted.
In accepting the Wexner Prize, Leibovitz joins this distinguished company of past recipients.
Peter Brook, theater director
John Cage, composer/musician, with Merce Cunningham, choreographer
Bruce Nauman, visual artist
Yvonne Rainer, choreographer and filmmaker
Martin Scorsese, filmmaker
Gerhard Richter, painter
Louise Bourgeois, visual artist
Robert Rauschenberg, visual artist
Renzo Piano, architect
William Forsythe, choreographer
Issey Miyake, designer
Bill T. Jones, choreographer
Spike Lee, filmmaker
The Wexner Prize Conversation takes place in Mershon Auditorium at the Wexner Center on November 9 at 5:30 p.m. Ticket information: $20 general public, $15 Wexner Center members and seniors, and free for students. Tickets available at tickets.wexarts.org or 614/292-3535.
Learn more and donate to Wexner Center for the Arts of The Ohio State University via their PowerPhilanthropy® portrait.
Information about local nonprofits is available 24/7 through the Foundation’s online resource, PowerPhilanthropy, which is available to everyone who wants to be more informed about nonprofits before they give. PowerPhilanthropy makes it easy to donate to the causes you care about at columbusfoundation.org/p2/.
Follow us on Twitter at @colsfoundation and like The Columbus Foundation on Facebook.
