Rodney McMillian Collects New Art Prize
Lone Star Recognition
STEFANIE KEENAN
Last year Forbes pressed acclaimed Los Angeles artist Rodney McMillian (Art MFA 02) on why he and a number of other noted California artists reject the idea that “museum and gallery exhibitions are thought to legitimize any artist as being a ‘true’ artist or, at the very least, a professional artist.” He had three ongoing shows in Philadelphia and New York at the time. It turns out that a $100,000 museum award also does not detract from legitimizing an artist’s work. McMillian is the winner of the inaugural Suzanne Deal Booth Art Prize at The Contemporary Austin—an award whose unrestricted $100,000 purse ranks among the world’s largest. The new biannual award comes with a solo exhibition for McMillian at the Texas museum’s downtown Austin venue, the Jones Center, beginning Feb. 3, 2018 (with an option to be featured instead at the museum’s outdoor site). The prize is part of The Contemporary Austin’s mission to attract global talent to the Lone Star state. Thrilled and honored to be the prize’s firstever recipient, McMillian says that “an award such as this can enable an artist to re-imagine what is possible for one’s practice or one’s self.” McMillian is known for utilizing sculpture, painting, video, performance, and installation art to explore themes of gender, class,
The artist at the REDCAT Gala
and race from personal and political perspectives. A trademark is his “post-consumer” art— work made from scavenged materials. McMillian has had exhibitions at the UCLA Hammer Museum and The Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) in Los Angeles, The Studio Museum in Harlem and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) in Boston, the Herning Museum of Contemporary Art in Denmark, and the Royal Academy in London. A South Carolina native, McMillian came to CalArts after having studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. He also holds a BA in Foreign Affairs from the University of Virginia. the POOL
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