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Dora Akunyili’s daughter wins prestigious 2015 Wein Prize

Published

8 years ago

October 30, 2015

Daughter of the late Dora Akunyili, Nijideka Akunyili Crosby (32) who recently moved to Los Angeles has become popular for her large scale paintings depicting African American domestic scenes, as she has clinched the first prize in the tenth annual Joyce WEIN Artist Prize (2015).,

The Studio Museum in Harlem made the announcement recently, revealing that it was bestowing its Wein Prize – a $50,000 award won in the past by esteemed artists like Lorna Simpson, Glenn Ligon and Trenton Doyle Hancock – to the Nigerian-born painter who has lived and worked in the United States for many years

The prize was established by George Wein, a founder of the Newport Jazz Festival, in honor of his wife, Joyce Alexander Wein, a trustee of the museum who died in 2005 and it has been given every year since 2006 to established or emerging African-American artists.

Njideka’s paintings are usually of scenes that are visually complicated with collage elements drawn from Nigerian lifestyle magazines, her own photo albums and the Internet. According to Smithsonian Magazine, her works, “explore a complex topic – the tug she feels between her adopted home in America and her native country.”

Her work has recently been featured in a solo show at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles and was included in the New Museum’s 2015 Triennial. The prestigious Victoria Miro gallery in London began to represent Ms. Crosby earlier this year, and her work is now the subject of an exhibition at the gallery, organized by the critic Hilton Als.

Thelma Golden, the Studio Museum’s director, said Ms. Crosby was chosen because of her work’s “great innovation and promise” and also because she “truly represents the global nature of the Studio Museum’s mission and reach.”

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