ASPEN ART MUSEUM ANNOUNCES GARY SIMMONS AS 2022 ARTCRUSH ARTIST HONOREE

ASPEN, COLORADO (May 12, 2022) –– Nicola Lees, Nancy and Bob Magoon Director of the AspenArt Museum (AAM), today announced Gary Simmons as the 2022 ArtCrush Artist Honoree. The award will be presented to Simmons at the annual ArtCrush Gala on Friday, August 5, 2022, as part of the broader programming of the museum’s second annual Aspen ArtWeek scheduled to run from August 2 through 6. The Gala is co-chaired by Jamie Tisch, Sara Zilkha, and Chandra Johnson.

 Nicola Lees said, “All of us at the Aspen Art Museum are thrilled that Gary Simmons will be central to this year’s edition of our new annual tradition, Aspen ArtWeek, as the honoree of our 2022 ArtCrush Gala. During Aspen ArtWeek, we invite our wide-ranging community to join a multiplicity of events and dialogues with outstanding contemporary artists, in which we come together to consider some of today’s most urgent issues and ideas. No artist could be more vital to the goals of Aspen ArtWeek than Gary Simmons, an artist who has devoted more than three decades of outstanding creative work to examining how race and class are represented and experienced in America. We’re proud to have Gary Simmons’s participation in Aspen ArtWeek and are deeply grateful for the support of our community—especially this year’s co-chairs, Jamie Tisch, Sara Zilkha, and Chandra Johnson—in making these events possible.”

 The work of Gary Simmons will be the subject of a forthcoming presentation at the Aspen Art Museum.

 Taking place from August 2 through 6, 2022, the second annual Aspen ArtWeek and the long-running ArtCrush Gala will include all that the international contemporary art community has come to enjoy from this gathering. Further details on Aspen ArtWeek programming will be announced later this spring. 

Over the past seventeen years, ArtCrush has been the largest annual fundraiser for the Aspen Art Museum with proceeds supporting innovative exhibitions and dynamic educational programming, including local outreach and other programs that impact local and international communities.

The funds raised support educational programming that fosters creativity, conversation, connection, and community through the experience of art and artists. Programming includes art-making workshops for children, teens, and adults; summer youth workshops both on and off-site; professional development and support for teachers; program support for local and Colorado Western Slope arts organizations; programming to support local artists; and exhibition tours for the community.

This summer the Aspen Art Museum is proud to partner with the Aspen Center for Environmental Studies and Valley Settlement to create playful art-making workshops for children and families that incorporate the nature and wildlife of Aspen. For more on the educational offerings of Aspen Art Museum, visit aspenartmuseum.org/learning.

ABOUT GARY SIMMONS

 With cited inspiration from nearly every corner of American popular culture, Gary Simmons draws on our collective experience and memory of race and class in America to create thought-provoking works in a range of media including sculpture, painting, drawings on slate, and ready-made objects that uniquely address our present moment.

 Simmons was born in 1964 in New York and currently lives and works in Los Angeles. The artist received his BFA from the School of Visual Arts in 1988 and his MFA from CalArts in 1990.

The artist has been the subject of solo exhibitions at the California African American Museum, Los Angeles; Perez Art Museum, Miami; the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago; Studio Museum in Harlem; Museum of Modern Art of Fort Worth; Bohen Foundation, New York; St. Louis Art Museum; Kunsthaus Zürich; Lannan Foundation, Los Angeles; and the Hirshhorn Museum, Washington, D.C.

His work was included in the influential exhibition Black Male: Representations of Masculinity in Contemporary American Art at the Whitney Museum, New York, in 1994. He has also been included in exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Menil Collection, Houston; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; and the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam. Simmons additionally participated in the 2020 Lahore Biennale, the 56th Venice Biennale, Sharjah Biennial 12, and Prospect 3, New Orleans.