Dorner Prize 2017
Introduction
The Dorner Prize is an annual juried competition that invites RISD student artists and designers to create new installations, performances, programs, or digital encounters that engage the public by using the RISD Museum’s spaces, objects, and digital platforms. Dorner Prize projects examine, critique, or respond to the collections, architectural idiosyncrasies, habits of visitation, and/or web presence of the Museum, encouraging further conceptual interpretation and lively discussion.
First established in 1995 as Sitings, the Dorner Prize was renamed in 2016. Dorner Prize winners work closely with museum professionals during each phase of the process, and their projects are exhibited in the Museum and online. One or two projects are selected each year.
This year’s Dorner Prize was awarded to Cameron Kucera (RISD BArch 2019, Architecture), Makoto Moses Kumasaka (RISD BFA 2018, Furniture), and Vuthy Lay (RISD BArch 2019, Architecture) for White Wall, installed on the Museum’s façade on Benefit Street.
Cameron Kucera
Caucasian American, b. 1995 (RISD BArch 2019, Architecture)
Vuthy Lay
Khmer American, b. 1996 (RISD BArch 2019, Architecture)
Makoto Moses Kumasaka
Hafu American, b. 1996 (RISD BFA 2018, Furniture)
White Wall, 2017
Bamboo, paint, cable ties, galvanized steel fasteners
White Wall, a winning entry for the Dorner Prize 2017, is a bamboo screen and performance space that formalizes the invisible socioeconomic obstructions to museum accessibility. This piece seeks to take the architectural conditions of the Radeke Building and redefine them as a platform for discussion, demonstration, and contact. Intervention art as well as institutional critique, this project is offered by the artists as a scaffolding for others to join the conversation.
Named in honor of pioneering art educator Alexander Dorner, the RISD Museum’s director from 1938 to 1941, the Dorner Prize is made possible by a generous anonymous gift. This year’s jurors were Dominic Molon, the Museum’s Richard Brown Baker Curator of Contemporary Art, and Eduardo Duarte, associate professor of interior architecture at RISD.
Exhibition images
