the Governor's Arts Award Winners

Lucy R. Lippard

2018 Recipient, Major Contributor to the Arts

Lucy R. Lippard of Galisteo, Major Contributor to the Arts: is a writer, activist, and sometime curator who had already established an international reputation as one of the foremost critics of contemporary art when she moved to New Mexico 25 years ago. "Lucy R. Lippard is a brilliant example of a person whose life and work demonstrate the highest values of scholarship, engagement and support for the creative sector from pre-history through to the present," said nominator Diane R. Karp, president of the Nancy Holt-Robert Smithson Foundation and former executive director of the Santa Fe Art Institute. "She is an asset to the state of New Mexico and the world at large." Lippard has written 24 books on contemporary art, feminism, multicultural art, cultural criticism, history, and archaeology, as well as regular columns on art and politics for the Village Voice, In These Times and Z Magazine. She is a contributing editor emeritus to Art in America and co-founder of several activist artists' organizations. "Her book, The Lure of the Local, talks about the importance of paying attention to the artists in the region where one lives and works in a climate of globalization and homogenization," said Stuart Ashman, the former Cabinet Secretary of the New Mexico Department of Cultural Affairs. "Particularly in a culturally diverse state like New Mexico this book strikes an essential chord, given the richness of the cultures here and the influences that they shared with each other." A longtime resident of Galisteo, Lippard has volunteered with the village's planning committee, fire department, and water board and for 21 years has edited the monthly community newsletter El Puente de Galisteo. Lippard was an important writer and curator as an integral part of the minimal and conceptual art movements of the 1960s and 1970s. "Her essay, The Dematerialization of Art, with John Chandler defined this new art and also defined the role of the critic in a new and expanded definition of art," said Mary J. Kershaw, director of the New Mexico Museum of Art. "The relevance of her text Six Years: The Dematerialization of the Art Object from 1966 to 1972, which defined and documented the conceptual art movement, was reinforced by the Materializing "Six Years": Lucy R. Lippard and the Emergence of Conceptual Art, an exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum, marking the 40th anniversary of the book's release. It is the rare publication that forty years after its release warrants an entire exhibition at a significant East Coast institution." Lippard graduated from Smith College in 1958 and received a master's degree in art history from the New York University Institute of Fine Arts. She has received nine honorary doctorates from such prestigious institutions as the Art Institute of Chicago and Bowdoin College. Her awards include a Guggenheim Fellowship, grants from the Lannan Foundation and Creative Capital, and two lifetime achievement awards. In 2017, she received the Edgar L. Hewett Award from the New Mexico Association of Museums. "In addition to all these honors for her dedicated and outstanding contributions to the arts, Lucy has generously donated many works of contemporary art (valued at approximately $3.5 million) to the New Mexico Museum of Art,' Karp said. Artist Susan York said the value and impact of Lippard's donation of art is significant. "As a life-long New Mexican who grew up seeing iconic art works only in books, I can say unequivocally that the impact of Lippard's generosity will deeply affect current and future generations," York said. Lippard is also a regular participant in panels and initiatives on art and archaeology across a range of institutions here in New Mexico, "sharing her experience and knowledge with a generosity of spirit that enriches our community," Kershaw said.