The Wexner Prize

The Wexner Prize recognizes an artist whose work reflects exceptional innovation and the highest standards of artistic quality and integrity. Most recently, visionary filmmaker Spike Lee received the Wexner Prize in 2008.

The prize includes a $50,000 award and an engraved commemorative sculpture designed by renowned artist Jim Dine in 1991. Programs at the Wexner Center explore the prize recipient's career and thought.

A Distinguished Company

"For me, the most touching thing about the prize is the feeling of being accepted as a part of a group of people that I've admired and loved all along...It is a wonderful family which the Wexner Center brings together."--Gerhard Richter

Varied programs developed in conjunction with each prize presentation offer our university and community audiences opportunities to hear from and about some of the most distinguished creative figures working today. In this way, the prize plays a crucial role in the Wexner Center's educational mission and identity as an international research laboratory for the arts.

A packed schedule of events surrounded the presentation of the prize to Issey Miyake in 2004. For a full month Wexner Center audiences were able to see selected examples of Miyake's work firsthand in A-POC: Radical and Practical, an installation highlighting his work with A-POC (A Piece of Cloth), initiated in the late 1990s. Miyake himself toured the installation with students of architecture, design, fashion, and Japanese culture.

In February 2008, even a blizzard couldn't dampen the excitement surrounding the Wexner Prize events with recipient Spike Lee. Filmmaker Spike Lee received the prize on Monday, February 11, at a by-invitation ceremony. The famed director participated in several discussion sessions as part of the Prize events with Columbus-area teens and students from Ohio State's Film Studies Program, as well as a public conversation with author James McBride about his work. Many of Lee's films were also screened throughout the month of February including Malcolm X, He Got Game, and Do the Right Thing, to name a few.

About the Prize

"Being on the International Arts Advisory Council to choose the recipient for the Wexner Prize has been like sitting in on a kind of galactic-level master-class--enthralling, intimidating, and deeply satisfying."--Billie Tsien, artist

The Wexner Prize, first awarded in 1992, is presented annually to a major contemporary artist in any artistic field who has been consistently original, influential, and challenging to convention. The $50,000 prize 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.

The recipient is chosen by the trustees of the Wexner Center Foundation, the supporting organization for the Wexner Center. Recipients are nominated by the center's International Arts Advisory Council, whose members are prominent artists and arts professionals from many disciplines.

An Unusual Symbol

A commemorative sculpture designed by artist Jim Dine accompanies the Wexner Prize award. Throughout his career, Dine has produced numerous images of saws, rakes, pliers, brushes, and other hand tools. According to the artist, hammers--which can be used to build as well as to break apart--symbolize the creative force that drives artists. Dine, whose work has been the subject of major retrospectives at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York and Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, is a former member of the Wexner Center's International Arts Advisory Council.

More about 2008 Wexner Prize Winner Spike Lee

Wexner Prize Commemorative Sculpture by Jim Dine

Wexner Center International Arts Advisory Council

Prize Recipients