The Hermitage Artist Retreat (Andy Sandberg, Inventive Director and CEO), in collaboration with the Philadelphia-based Greenfield Basis, has selected two recipients for the 2023 Hermitage Greenfield Prize, a person in the willpower of visible artwork and a single in the area of dance and choreography. The prize is awarded every year, rotating involving the fields of new music, theater, and visible artwork. This year’s recipient in visible art is Sandy Rodriguez. Elevated on the US-Mexico border, Rodriguez produces poignant landscapes that weave collectively background, social memory, up to date politics, and cultural creation. Earlier winners of this distinguished honor in visible artwork include Sanford Biggers, Trenton Doyle Hancock, and Coco Fusco, among some others.
To celebrate the 20th anniversary year of the Hermitage and the 15-calendar year legacy of the Hermitage Greenfield Prize, the Hermitage and the Greenfield Basis resolved to present a second award in the discipline of dance and choreography. This is the initially time the HGP is recognizing dance, with a particular prize heading to Lorenzo ‘Rennie’ Harris. Harris has been a pioneer in the avenue dance motion given that founding Rennie Harris Puremovement in the early 90s, bringing reliable hip-hop encounters to the dance live performance phase and educational areas about the world.
Harris and Rodriguez will every get a 6-week Hermitage Fellowship and a $30,000 commission to develop a new do the job in their respective fields, which will have their first community displays in Sarasota County in 2025.
“Amidst a genuinely amazing discipline of finalists for both dance and visible artwork, Rennie Harris and Sandy Rodriguez are the two groundbreaking generative artists who impressed the respective juries with their compelling and inspiring proposals,” says Hermitage Artistic Director Andy Sandberg. “Their determination to their craft embodies the mission of the Hermitage Greenfield Prize – to convey into the environment works of artwork that have a significant impact on the broad as well as the creative culture of our culture. We thank our distinguished jurors for their enthusiasm and dedication, and we congratulate all of our excellent finalists, whom we look forward to welcoming at the Hermitage. We glance ahead to welcome Rennie and Sandy to Florida for the Hermitage Greenfield Prize Dinner in April, and subsequently web hosting them as Hermitage Fellows and sharing the 1st community presentations of their new commissions in Sarasota in 2025.” The Hermitage’s presenting associates for every of their works will be introduced at a later on date.
Lorenzo ‘Rennie’ Harris was born and elevated in an African American neighborhood in North Philadelphia. In 1992, Harris started Rennie Harris Puremovement, a road dance theater corporation focused to preserving and disseminating hip-hop society by workshops, classes, hip-hop history lecture demonstrations, prolonged-time period residencies, mentoring applications, and general public performances. Harris started his corporation dependent on the belief that hip-hop is the most significant unique expression of a new technology. His company has toured internationally doing these kinds of initial functions as “Rome and Jules,” a reimagining of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet (2001 ‘Bessie’ award in choreography), “Lazarus” as the initially choreographer in home for the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater in 2018, and “Lifted: A Gospel Dwelling Musical” a New York Times Critics’ Choose when it premiered at The Joyce Theater in 2022, amongst lots of other productions and honors.
Primarily based in Los Angeles, Sandy Rodriguez is a first-era Chicana artist and researcher. Considering the fact that receiving her BFA from the California Institute of Arts, she has exhibited her is effective at the Denver Art Museum, The Huntington Library, Artwork Museum and Botanical Backyard garden, The Amon Carter Museum of American Artwork, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Busan, South Korea. Her is effective, this kind of as Codex Rodriguez-Mondragón have been showcased in BBC News: In The Studio, Hyperallergic, LA Weekly, Los Angeles Situations, The New York Instances, and Spectrum News/NY1, and her performs are in the long lasting collections of Los Angeles County Museum of Art Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, AR Amon Carter Museum, Fort Well worth, TX, The Huntington Library, Artwork Museum and Botanical Back garden, San Marino, CA, among some others.
Hermitage Greenfield Prize recipients and finalists are nominated and picked by a jury of nationally identified arts leaders. The 2023 jury in dance and choreography incorporated Joseph V. Melillo (chair), BAM’s Government Director Emeritus and the initial member of the Hermitage’s National Curatorial Council Michael Novak, Creative Director of the acclaimed Paul Taylor Dance Organization, and a longtime organization member himself and Charmaine Warren, performer, historian, marketing consultant, dance author, and the founding inventive director for “Black Dance Stories.”
A few finalists for the 2023 Hermitage Greenfield Prize in Dance & Choreography involve Dormeshia, hailed by The New York Instances as “the queen of faucet” and co-director of the tap software at Jacob’s Pillow Jamar Roberts, a Bessie Award winner for Exceptional Effectiveness who has choreographed for such mentioned institutions as Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, New York Metropolis Ballet, and San Francisco Ballet and Christopher Williams, a 2021 Guggenheim Fellow in choreography whose works have been witnessed all in excess of the entire world together with commissions from Baryshnikov Arts Heart, The Joyce Theater, NYLA, Opéra Royal du Château de Versailles, and Perm Opera & Ballet Theater. All 3 dance finalists will get a Hermitage Fellowship, in addition to a prize of $1,000.
“Rennie Harris belongs in the pantheon of American masters,” states Joseph Melillo. “His use of Hip-hop procedures, types, and vocabularies has reworked the dance style to an inventive plateau. He has achieved this transformative achievement with humanity, intelligence, and grace.”
“I am over and above thrilled that the prestigious Hermitage Greenfield Prize is generously supporting dance and choreographers this 12 months, thereby achieving a lot more audiences of all ages throughout our better arts communities,” suggests Michael Novak. “It implies a terrific offer to supply this prize to Rennie Harris, an icon in our field who has not only introduced Avenue and Hip-hop dance – in all its strong iterations – to the front and middle of the live performance dance landscape, but he has done so with a strong enthusiasm for instruction, hope, inclusion, and supporting the next technology of dancers and dance-fans.”
“It makes sense that Dance Magazine long in the past dubbed Rennie Harris the “large priest of hip hop,” suggests Charmaine Warren. “When the frequently-shy, Philadelphia-born choreographer established his company Rennie Harris Puremovement in 1992, he planted a prodigious seed in the dance entire world. Then and now, Harris’ mission has been to analyze, preserve, and share the culture of Hip-hop, decisively away from the commercially exploited check out. This award from the Hermitage Artist Retreat and the Greenfield Foundation will guidance Rennie’s continued get the job done in training the earth about the American-born dance variety.”
“I am usually appreciative of when I am noticed simply because we all shift in our have worlds, just figuring matters out and in no way being aware of who is looking at. This is unquestionably a major shock,” said Harris on hearing the information. “I am really grateful to everyone who thought of me and thinks that I’m value the time to help help in this lifelong vision.”
Rennie Harris’ intended fee will emphasis on a work titled “Dropping My Religion,” a own reflection on his very own journey that weaves in thoughts on the world’s collective dilemmas. Harris is recognized for demanding what has appear to be expected of Avenue dance and Hip-hop culture and the degenerative social norms and beliefs that ground the struggles of our time. As a section of this new work, he designs to integrate a reimagining of his renowned solo, “Endangered Species,” an autobiographical operate recounting his experience of becoming chased and shot down in Kingston, Jamaica when touring as a U.S. ambassador for President Reagan’s ‘American Embassy Tour.’ The solo’s inclusion in the perform completes a tale of systemic racism and revolt, shifting absent from what was to what is and what can be. Harris options to debut his very own acrylic and collage visuals as component of the work and hopes the perform will be a auto for his return to the stage, environment the work on his possess physique. “Shedding My Religion” aims to be a haunting narrative of private and systemic battle and transformation, symbolic of an awakening and finally reminding us of our humanity. Harris provides, “This work, at its core, coincides with the mission of the Hermitage Greenfield Prize, invoking and selling voice and expression of the human spirit.”
Visual Art recipients and finalists of the Hermitage Greenfield Prize are equally nominated and selected by a jury of nationally identified arts leaders. The 2023 jury in Visual Art incorporated Allison Glenn, Senior Curator at New York’s Public Artwork Fund and curator of Guarantee, Witness, Remembrance (2021) at the Pace Artwork Museum, which The New York Periods chosen as a person of the “Most effective Art Exhibitions of 2021” Christine Kuan, President and Govt Director of Imaginative Money, and the previous CEO/Director of Sotheby’s Institute of Artwork (NY) and Anne Patterson, acclaimed multidisciplinary visible artist and alumna Hermitage Fellow whose the latest fee Ascendant Gentle is the anchor of Money One’s company headquarters.
A few finalists for the 2023 Hermitage Greenfield Prize in Visible Artwork incorporate Maura Brewer, whose perform has been exhibited at MoMA, Art in Typical in New York, the MCA in Chicago, the Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève, and the Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wein in Vienna, amongst other locations Azza El Siddique, who has exhibited operate at mentioned intuitions these kinds of as MIT List Heart, Helena Anrather (NY), Oakville Galleries (Ontario), The Gardiner Museum (Toronto), and The Museum of Up to date Art (Toronto) and Joanna Keane Lopez, who has been supported by the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visible Arts and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and had perform exhibited at The Momentary of the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Web-site Santa Fe, the Nationwide Hispanic Cultural Centre Art Museum, Akron Art Museum, and Sarasota Art Museum. All three visual art finalists will get a Hermitage Fellowship, in addition to a prize of $1,000.
“Sandy Rodriquez is an artist very specific to this time,” suggests Anne Patterson. “Her inspired assumed-provoking get the job done reveals neglected histories that urgently require to be unveiled.” Fellow visual artwork jurors Allison Glenn and Christine Kuan echoed Patterson’s remarks, describing Rodriguez as “dynamic,” “exceptional,” “persuasive,” and a “neighborhood builder.”
“I couldn’t be extra thrilled to have this possibility, and to assume very deeply about what it suggests to make a web page-unique set up that will interact with a assortment of constituents and communities to truly move the subject forward.” claimed Sandy Rodriguez upon discovering of her range. “The finalist invitation from the Hermitage gave me a moment to pause and to contemplate what may well be achievable – how I may take this instant of radical expansion and progress and do something experimental and website-particular to this area and this firm. I am just absolutely overjoyed.”
Sandy Rodriguez designs to use her commission to generate a panoramic exhibition, the centerpiece of which will be a new large-scale map that depicts the southeastern topography and shoreline marked by tales of resistance from the colonial period of time to the current. Made with hand-processed regional mineral pigment watercolors on amate paper with an accompanying audio installation, the effect will be reminiscent of a 19th-century design panorama in the spherical. Rodriguez intends that the anticolonial panorama will make obvious a historical past of the area for a wide array of modern audiences. Of desire at this preliminary phase are the histories of indigenous resistance after the arrival of Juan Ponce de Leon, migrations, and functions drawn from modern information tales. The work will include things like depictions of endemic and endangered indigenous vegetation and marine animals, and local climate improve as ongoing colonial aggression will also be addressed in the function.
Harris and Rodriguez will be celebrated at the Hermitage Greenfield Prize Evening meal on Sunday, April 16th, at 6pm at the Ca’ d’Zan of The Ringling Museum in Sarasota, Florida. Capacity will be restricted, so early reservations are strongly advised. Co-Chairs for this party are Tom & Sherry Koski, with The Ringling Museum Govt Director Steven Superior and Sarasota Artwork Museum Government Director Virginia Shearer serving as Honorary Co-Chairs. Tables and sponsorships now offered extra details can be located at HermitageArtistRetreat.org.
In addition to the Hermitage Greenfield Prize Evening meal on April 16th, the Hermitage Greenfield Prize Celebration will incorporate programs and talks with recent and earlier HGP winners and jurors during the weekend of April 14-16, 2023. These gatherings will be offered on the Hermitage Beach and all through Sarasota County with some also offered on the web. Further information about these courses will be introduced at a later on day. The Hermitage Greenfield Prize Celebration is offered in partnership with the Greenfield Foundation, with the Local community Basis of Sarasota County serving as the guide Community Sponsor.
In addition to the Hermitage Greenfield Prize, the Hermitage Artist Retreat introduced the yearly Hermitage Significant Theater Award (HMTA) in 2021, recently set up to acknowledge a playwright or theater artist with a $35,000 fee to build a new, primary, and impactful piece of theater. Recipients of the HMTA to date include playwright Madeleine George (Only Murders in the Setting up on Hulu) and theater maker Shariffa Ali, both with predicted developmental workshops in the tumble of 2023, as nicely as the most lately declared recipient Imani Uzuri with an envisioned presentation of her operate in the tumble of 2024.
For more info about the Hermitage, the Hermitage Greenfield Prize, and forthcoming Hermitage applications, check out HermitageArtistRetreat.org.