Le Prix Eugene McDermott du Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)

The Eugene McDermott Award in the Arts at MIT recognizes rising, innovative talents and offers its recipient a $100,000 prize and a campus residency.

Established in 1974 by the Council for the Arts at MIT, the Eugene McDermott Award in the Arts at MIT is bestowed upon individuals whose artistic trajectory and body of work indicate that they will achieve the highest distinction and become leaders in their fields. One of the most generous arts honors in the US, the Award reflects MIT’s commitment to risk-taking, problem solving, and to the idea of connecting creative minds across disciplines. The Award is considered an investment in the recipient’s future creative work, rather than a prize for a particular project or lifetime of achievement.

A distinctive feature of the Award is a campus residency, which includes a celebratory event at which the Award is presented, a public presentation of the artist’s work, and other less formal interactions with students, faculty and staff.  The goal of the residency is to provide the recipient unparalleled access to the creative energy and cutting-edge research found in the MIT community and to have the recipient connect with departments, laboratories and research centers throughout the Institute in ways that will be mutually enlightening.

The Eugene McDermott Award in the Arts at MIT may be given to an artist working in any field or cross-disciplinary activity, including architecture, creative writing, dance, design, filmmaking, media arts, music, theater and visual arts. Award nominees are identified by an Advisory Committee, which is composed of international leaders in arts and culture. An Award Committee, chosen by the Council for the Arts at MIT and comprised of arts opinion leaders at MIT, then selects the recipient.

Édition 2014

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) announced that Olafur Eliasson is the recipient of the 2014, 40th anniversary Eugene McDermott Award in the Arts at MIT, presented by the Council for the Arts at MIT.

The award, which includes a 100,000 USD cash prize and a campus residency, celebrates innovative talents in all arts disciplines and is one of the most generous cultural honors in the United States.

Olafur Eliasson’s critically acclaimed works have appeared in and been collected by major museums around the world since 1997. In 2003 he installed The weather project in Tate Modern, London, which was seen by more than two million people. Take your time: Olafur Eliasson, a survey exhibition organized by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, traveled until 2010, stopping in New York at MoMA and the Dallas Museum of Art. Seu corpo da obra (Your body of work), 2011, engaged with three institutions around São Paulo and spread into the vast metropolis. 

Eliasson’s projects in public space include The New York City Waterfalls, commissioned by Public Art Fund in 2008 with the support of Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Harpa, the Reykjavik Concert Hall and Conference Centre, for which Eliasson created a crystalline façade, was inaugurated in August 2011 and received the European Union Prize for Contemporary Architecture Mies Van Der Rohe Award in 2013.

Together with engineer Frederik Ottesen, Eliasson developed Little Sun, a solar-powered light for use in areas of the world without access to electricity. Little Sun was launched at Tate Modern as part of the London 2012 Festival, has been presented at events around the world and will be a special project during Eliasson’s residency at MIT.

Established in 1995, his studio today numbers about seventy craftsmen, architects, geometers and art historians. In April 2009, as a professor at the Berlin University of the Arts, Olafur Eliasson founded the Institut für Raumexperimente (Institute for Spatial Experiments), a five-year experiment in arts education located in his studio in Berlin.

The official announcement is made at the Council for the Arts at MIT’s 41st annual meeting on October 24, and Eliasson will be presented with the award at a gala in his honor on March 13, 2014.

Further information on www.arts.mit.edu