Daughter of Late Dora Akunyili Wins Prestigious Art Award in Harlem

Njideka Akunyili Crosby, daughter of late Dora Akunyili has won the 2015 Joyce Alexander Wein Artist Prize.

The Studio Museum in Harlem said that it was bestowing its Wein Prize – a $50,000 award won in the past by esteemed artists like Lorna Simpson, Glenn Ligon and Trenton Doyle Hancock – to the painter who has lived and worked in the United States for many years.

Thelma Golden, the Studio Museum’s director, said Ms. Crosby was chosen because of her work’s “great innovation and promise” and also because she “truly represents the global nature of the Studio Museum’s mission and reach.”

The New York Times explains that the prize was established by George Wein, a founder of the Newport Jazz Festival, in honour of his wife, Joyce Alexander Wein, a trustee of the museum who died in 2005 and it has been given every year since 2006 to established or emerging African-American artists.

32 year old Crosby is known for her large-scale paintings that depict African and American domestic scenes which the Smithsonian Magazine says, “Explore a complex topic – the tug she feels between her adopted home in America and her native country.”

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