Tomashi Jackson

The Neuberger Museum of Art welcomed 2022 Roy R. Neuberger Prize recipient Tomashi Jackson to campus on October 12, 2022, to discuss her work and how she uses light, color, sound, and texture to explore issues of injustice and bring the power of art and policy to bear on historical engagement and critical action. Her talk was filmed in the Purchase College School of Art+Design in a classroom filled with students and friends from the community. 

This event was part of the Daniel P. Paduano and Janet W. Prindle Lecture Series.

Introduction by Neuberger Museum of Art Director Tracy Fitzpatrick.

About the Artist

Tomashi Jackson was born in Houston, Texas in 1980, raised in Los Angeles, and currently lives and works in New York and Cambridge, Massachusetts. She received a BFA from The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, New York; an MS from the MIT School of Architecture and Planning, Cambridge; and an MFA from the Yale School of Art, New Haven. She has been a Visiting Lecturer at Harvard University, Cambridge, and an Adjunct Professor at the Rhode Island School of Design, Providence and the Cooper Union School of Art, New York.

Her work was included in the 2019 Whitney Biennial and has been featured in solo exhibitions at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University; Parrish Art Museum, Water Mill, New York; The Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus; Night Gallery, Los Angeles; Tilton Gallery, New York City; Zuckerman Museum of Art, Kennesaw, Georgia and in group exhibitions at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Moody Center for the Arts at Rice University; Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art; the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston; the Contemporary Art Center, New Orleans; and the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art. Her work is included in the public collections of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, the Baltimore Museum of Art, and the Studio Museum in Harlem. Jackson completed the Skowhegan summer residency and was a Resident Fellow at ARCAthens, Athens, Greece in 2019 and she has been the Inga Maren Otto artist in residence at the Watermill Center in 2021. She was awarded the Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters & Sculptors Grant in 2020.

Jackson is represented by Tilton Gallery in New York and Night Gallery in Los Angeles.

About the Roy R. Neuberger Prize

Named for the Museum’s founding patron, the biennial Roy R. Neuberger Prize honors Mr. Neuberger’s lifelong commitment to support the work of living artists. Prize winners embody outstanding artistic achievement that inspires innovative thinking, fresh perspectives, and greater understanding and appreciation of the arts. An artist’s creative achievements to date and their promise of future artistic achievements are also factors in the selection process.

The winner is selected from a long list of candidates nominated by the Roy R. Neuberger Prize Advisory Panel, consisting of the museum’s director and curators, and various faculty at Purchase College, SUNY.

In addition to a $25,000 honorarium, winners have the opportunity to work with the Museum on a special exhibition and accompanying catalogue.

Previous recipients of the Roy R. Neuberger Prize include Cuban installation and performance artist Tania Bruguera, American figurative painter Dana Schutz, South African video and performance artist Robin Rhode, Argentine installation artist Leandro Erlich, and French Moroccan multidisciplinary artist Yto Barrada.

The 2022 Roy R. Neuberger Prize Exhibition, Tomashi Jackson: SLOW JAMZ, is on view at the Museum through December 11, 2022 (extended from November 27, 2022). The show is curated by Helaine Posner, Chief Curator Emerita, Neuberger Museum of Art.

Generous support for the Roy R. Neuberger Prize and this exhibition has been provided by Jim Neuberger and Helen Stambler Neuberger.

Tracy Fitzpatrick
Director, Neuberger Museum of Art

Tomashi Jackson
2022 Roy R. Neuberger Prize Recipient