The Jack Galef Visual Arts Award, established by Guggenheim New York to support artists working in the visual arts, will be granted biennially and provides an unconditional $50,000 award. The first recipient is Canadian-born, New York–based artist Catherine Telford Keogh.
Made possible through a donation from the Jack Galef Estate, the award aims to honor artists who have either demonstrated a strong body of work early in their careers or have sustained a long-term practice that has yet to receive sufficient visibility. Recipients are selected by a jury composed of Guggenheim’s curatorial team.
Mariët Westermann, Director of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Foundation, emphasized that the award reflects the institution’s ongoing commitment to supporting innovative practices in contemporary art. She noted that the initiative seeks to create space for artists to develop new directions and deepen their research.
A Practice Focused on Material, Infrastructure, and Transformation
Born in Toronto in 1986, Catherine Telford Keogh works primarily in sculpture and installation. Using recycled and everyday materials, her practice explores processes of material transformation, infrastructural systems, and their impact on contemporary life. Keogh has previously held solo exhibitions at Helena Anrather in New York and Erin Stump Projects in Toronto. She is currently a Socrates Fellow at Socrates Sculpture Park in Long Island City. The artist was also previously longlisted for the Sobey Art Award, one of Canada’s most prestigious art prizes.
In her statement regarding the award, Keogh noted that the support will allow her to further develop the slow and uncertain research processes that form the foundation of her practice. She plans to allocate part of the prize toward a new research project examining the relationship between industrial pollution and microbial life in the Gowanus Canal. The project focuses on how devalued or overlooked forms of life continue to exist and adapt under adverse conditions.
The Jack Galef Visual Arts Award is not Guggenheim’s only prize initiative. The museum also continues to administer the Guggenheim LG Award, which supports technology-based artistic practices and offers a $100,000 prize. The most recent recipient of the Guggenheim LG Award was Korean artist Ayoung Kim, announced in February 2025. In the past, Guggenheim also garnered significant attention with the Hugo Boss Prize, which was awarded between 1996 and 2020 before being discontinued in 2022.
