GRAYSON PERRY RECEIVES ERASMUS PRIZE

British ceramicist Grayson Perry has won the $165,000 Erasmus Prize, the Dutch version of the Nobel, whose theme this year was “the power of the image in the digital era.” The award is given annually by the Praemium Erasmianum Foundation to a person or institution that has made “an exceptional contribution to the humanities, the social sciences or the arts.” Perry is the first British artist to receive the prize since Henry Moore in 1968.

“At a time when we are constantly bombarded with images, Perry has developed a unique visual language demonstrating that art belongs to everybody and should not be an elitist affair,” the judges said of the artist, who, in addition to creating traditionally coiled vessels, makes woodcuts, tapestries, dresses, and cast-iron sculptures that address issues of gender, group identity, and electoral politics.

Perry was born in Chelmsford, UK, in 1960, and studied at Portsmouth Polytechnic and the Braintree College of Further Education. He won the Turner Prize in 2003, and has staged recent solo exhibitions at Kiasma, Helsinki; Serpentine Gallery, London; and Bonnefantenmuseum, Maastricht. Perry’s work has been collected by the British Museum, London; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; and the Tate, London.

The Erasmus Prize will be awarded in Amsterdam by King Willem-Alexander of the Netherlands in November. Artists Sigmar Polke and Bernd and Hilla Becher; writers Isaiah Berlin and Václav Havel; and filmmaker Ingmar Bergman are among the award’s previous recipients.