Meet the Jurors of the Inaugural Galerie Emerging Artist Award

Galerie magazine is thrilled to announce the jurors for its inaugural Galerie Emerging Artist Award (GEAA), an annual $10,000 prize that recognizes, supports, and promotes promising talents who are set to make their mark on the art world.

Judging the winners and finalists of this year’s award are collector Beth Rudin DeWoody, Creative Time executive director Justine Ludwig, artistic director of White Cube Eric Shiner, curator Nicola Vassell, and Aspen Art Museum director Heidi Zuckerman.

Galerie spotlights emerging talent in every issue and now the GEAA takes that mission a step further by giving artists the support with an unrestricted prize. The jurors, together with Galerie founding editor Lisa Cohen and editor in chief Jacqueline Terrebonne, will select the winner and ten finalists of the prize, which will be announced in a special Emerging Artists issue in October 2019.

Discover the jury below.

Beth Rudin DeWoody. Photo: Courtesy of Beth Rudin DeWoody

BETH RUDIN DeWOODY
Chairman, The Rudin Family Foundations

Beth Rudin DeWoody is a collector and philanthropist who has long been a supporter of artists and emerging talent in particular. While she is chairman of The Rudin Family Foundations and executive vice president of Rudin Management Company, she also serves on the boards of various cultural institutions, including the Whitney Museum, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, and L.A.’s Hammer Museum. Two years ago, she opened The Bunker, an art space in West Palm Beach to match her renowned collection, which includes work by George Condo and Nicole Eisenman, as well as many emerging artists such as Kathleen Ryan and Kenneth Zoran.

Recommended: Inside Beth Rudin DeWoody’s Art-Filled Bunker in South Florida

Justine Ludwig. Photo: Nicholas Parakas. Courtesy of Justine Ludwig

JUSTINE LUDWIG
Executive Director, Creative Time

As the executive director of Creative Time, Justine Ludwig is entrusted with overseeing an organization beloved for supporting public art and giving growing audiences more access to great art. Prior to that, she was at the nonprofit Dallas Contemporary, where she was deputy director and chief curator. Ludwig has curated projects with many artists, including Shilpa Gupta, Nadia Kaabi-Linke, Pedro Reyes, Laercio Rendondo, Paola Pivi, and Pia Camil. Her research interests include the intersections of aesthetics and architecture, violence, economics, and globalization.

Recommended: Paola Pivi’s Playful Baby Bears Take Over Perrotin

Eric Shiner. Photo: Courtesy of Eric Shiner

ERIC SHINER
Artistic Director New York, White Cube

In 2018, Eric Shiner was appointed artistic director New York at the venerable White Cube gallery, which represents major artists, including Tracey Emin, Chuck Close, and Theaster Gates. Prior to that he was senior vice president of contemporary art at Sotheby’s. But long before he joined the commercial art world, Shiner gained renown as the head of the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, where he started out in 2008 as a curator. Shiner is known for his passion for art coupled with his extensive experience with artists and institutions.

Nicola Vassell Photo: Courtesy of Nicola Vassell

NICOLA VASSELL
Founder, Concept NV

After years in the art world serving as director of New York’s Deitch Projects and Pace Galleries, Nicola Vassell decided to strike out on her own with Concept NV, which she calls an “arts ideas lab” whose goal is to develop projects that explore social and cultural narratives. Vassell is curatorial director of the Dean Collection, the family art collection of Swizz Beatz and his wife, Alicia Keys. A frequent collaborator with Swizz Beatz, Vassell also produces his No Commission Art Fair and worked with him on the buzzy “Dreamweavers” exhibition in L.A., which featured significant artists, including Kerry James Marshall, Kehinde Wiley, and Carrie Mae Weems—artists who, according to Vassell, “sit within the powerful black renaissance of this era.”

Heidi Zuckerman. Photo: Karl Wolfgang. Courtesy of Heidi Zuckerman

HEIDI ZUCKERMAN
CEO and Director, Aspen Art Museum

Since joining the Aspen Art Museum in 2005, Heidi Zuckerman has transformed it into a world-class institution that sees some 100,000 visitors per year (compared with the 12,000 when she began). She also adjusted the museum’s mission to support first-time exhibitions of significant emerging artists and solo shows of established artists with a focus on lesser-known aspects of their practice as well as group shows addressing relevant social, political, and cultural subjects. Under her guidance, the museum saw a redesign by Pritzker Prize–winning artist Shigeru Ban in 2014 for which she raised $120 million.

Recommended: Aspen Art Museum Director Heidi Zuckerman Opens Her Diary for Galerie