Aspen Art Museum

The AAM is pleased to announce Rashid Johnson as the recipient of the 2018 Aspen Award for Art to be presented during the fourteenth annual ArtCrush summer benefit on Friday, August 3, 2018. “Rashid has been a friend of the AAM for years, having attended ArtCrush and contributed work to the event’s Live Auction in 2011. Rashid’s practice transcends a range of materials and disciplines to help us think in new ways about the world around us—a guiding ethos shared by the AAM in its curatorial programming and public service. We are delighted to honor him with the Aspen Award for Art and look forward to welcoming him back to the AAM and to Aspen,” says the Nancy and Bob Magoon CEO and Director Heidi Zuckerman.

Johnson’s Aspen Award for Art presentation will be followed by a summer 2019 solo exhibition at the Aspen Art Museum.

Johnson (b. 1977, Chicago, IL) is among an influential, core group of American artists whose work employs a wide range of materials and images to explore themes of art history, literature, philosophy, and personal and cultural identity. After beginning his career working primarily in photography, Johnson has expanded into a variety of media, including sculptural objects, painting, and installation. Johnson received his BA in photography from Columbia College Chicago, and in 2005, studied for his MFA at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Recent solo exhibitions include: Hail We Now Sing Joy, Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City (2017); Within Our Gates, Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, Moscow (2016); Blocks, High Line Art, New York, Anxious Men, the Drawing Center, New York, and Three Rooms, Kunsthalle Winterthur, Switzerland (all 2015).