New York public art nonprofit Creative Time announced that it has awarded its annual Leonore Annenberg Prize for Art and Social Change to the Dutch artist Jeanne Van Heeswijk. The prize, which carries a $25,000 purse, will be awarded at the annual Creative Time Summit next month.
Ms. van Heeswijk is known for socially engaged, interactive works that often involve vast numbers of collaborators. In 2008, for instance, she created a project called It Runs in the Neighbourhood, for which the artist worked with a team of volunteers in a Norwegian hospital to create a soap opera. And in Ljubljana, Slovenia, in 2008, Ms. van Heeswijk created a piece called You and the City, which invited teenagers to write about and meet together to discuss society and politics.
The past winners of the Annenberg Prize, which was started in 2009, are The Yes Men, in 2009, and Rick Lowe, the founder of Houston’s Project Row Houses alternative art space, in 2010.
