SECA Art Award - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

The SECA Art Award is a contemporary art award program that has been administered by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art is a modern art museum located in San Francisco, California. A nonprofit organization, SFMOMA holds an internationally recognized collection of modern and contemporary art and was the first museum on the West Coast devoted solely to 20th century art...

and its auxiliary SECA since 1967 to honor San Francisco Bay Area

San Francisco Bay Area

The San Francisco Bay Area, commonly known as the Bay Area, is a populated region that surrounds the San Francisco and San Pablo estuaries in Northern California. The region encompasses metropolitan areas of San Francisco, Oakland, and San Jose, along with smaller urban and rural areas...

artists. It includes an exhibition at SFMOMA, an accompanying catalogue, and a modest cash prize. The SECA Art Award distinguishes “artists working independently at a high level of artistic maturity whose work has not, at the time of recommendation, received substantial recognition."

Currently, the SECA Art Award exhibition occurs biennially. Two SFMOMA curators from the Department of Painting and Sculpture make the selection of finalists and award winners and co-organize the SECA Art Award exhibition.

The high-profile, ongoing exhibition series often provides artists with their first major exposure at a large institution. A number of past Art Award recipients and finalists are represented in SFMOMA's permanent collection and have been included in collection-based presentations.

SECA Profile

SECA (Society for the Encouragement of Contemporary Art) was founded in 1961 as an auxiliary of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

. The art interest group brings together collectors, curators, arts professionals, and artists through a variety of events that strengthen members' knowledge of contemporary art

Contemporary art

Contemporary art can be defined variously as art produced at this present point in time or art produced since World War II. The definition of the word contemporary would support the first view, but museums of contemporary art commonly define their collections as consisting of art produced...

and appreciation of the local art community. SECA consistently sponsors awards, which seek to support emerging artists and under-recognized mid-career artists.

SECA Art Award History

SECA began awarding prizes to individual Bay Area artists in 1967. Initially bestowed upon individuals, the awards evolved into awards combined with small group shows.
Studio visits were introduced in 1981 as part of the art award selection process.
Beginning in 1988, recommendations solicited from Bay Area art professionals and SECA members are introduced to the search process.
In 1995, the evaluation process involving the selection of the finalists and the choice of award recipients was modified to include greater input from SFMOMA’s Department of Painting and Sculpture. The selection of award finalists and award recipients would be made by two SFMOMA curators rather than the SECA membership.
A Film award was introduced in 1973 and was held irregularly until its last occurrence in 1998. A Photography award was added in 1976 and last held in 1982. A Video award was added in 1988 and was last held in 1992. An Electronic Media award was held once in 1996, and an Architecture and Design award was also held once in 2001.
On the occasion of the Museum's 75th anniversary, The Anniversary Show exhibition dedicates the SECA and The Mission School gallery to artworks from the collection by a selection of past SECA winners (1996–2006).
In 2010, the application language was modified to accept artworks in all media.
On the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of SECA in December 2011, SFMOMA will publish a comprehensive book on the history of the award program at SFMOMA Fifty Years of Bay Area Art: The SECA Awards.

List of SECA Art Award Winners

2010: Mauricio Ancalmo, Colter Jacobsen
Colter Jacobsen
Colter Jacobsen is an American artist based in San Francisco. His work includes drawings, paintings and installations.-Life:Jacobsen was born in Ramona, California and had a Mormon upbringing there. He later moved to San Francisco and studied at the San Francisco Art Institute...

, Ruth Laskey, Kamau Amu Patton; 2008: Tauba Auerbach, Desiree Holman, Jordan Kantor, Trevor Paglen
Trevor Paglen
Trevor Paglen is an American artist, geographer, and author.He holds a Master of Fine Arts degree from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a PhD in geography from the University of California at Berkeley, where he currently works as a researcher.Paglen is the author of three books...

;
2006: Sarah Cain, Kota Ezawa, Amy Franceschini
Amy Franceschini
Amy Franceschini is a contemporary American artist and designer. Her practice spans a broad range of media including drawing, sculpture, design, net art, public art and gardening.She is a 2010 Guggenheim Fellow....

, Mitzi Pederson, Leslie Shows;
2004: Josephine Taylor, Shaun O’Dell, Simon Evans, and Rosana Castrillo Diaz;
2002: John Bankston, Andrea Higgins, Chris Johanson
Chris Johanson
Chris Johanson is an American painter and street artist. He is a member of San Francisco's Mission School art movement.- Biography :Johanson was born in suburban San Jose, California in 1968. He has no formal training in art, learning some technique by painting skateboards and houses...

, and Will Rogan;
2000: Rachael Neubauer and Kathryn Van Dyke;
1998: Chris Finley, Gay Outlaw, Laurie Reid, and Rigo 23
Rigo 23
Rigo 23 , born Ricardo Gouveia, is a Portuguese muralist, painter, and political artist residing in San Francisco, California...

(Rigo 98);
1996: D-L Alvarez, Anne Appleby
Anne Appleby
Anne Appleby is an American color field/landscape painter. Her works, always bearing titles from the natural world---"Sweet Pine", "Summer Aspen", "Gem"---are simple arrangements of colored canvas panels. Each panel is, at a glance, monochromatic, but closer inspection reveals deep and luminous...

, and Barry McGee
Barry McGee
Barry McGee is a painter and graffiti artist. He is also known by monikers such as Ray Fong, Lydia Fong, Bernon Vernon, P.Kin, Ray Virgil, Twist and further variations of Twist, such as Twister, Twisty, Twisto and others.-Life and career:McGee graduated from El Camino High School in South...

;
1994: Toi Hoang;
1992 – 25th Anniversary: Hung Liu
Hung Liu
Hung Liu in Changchun, China is a Chinese-American contemporary artist.Hung Liu was born in the People's Republic, China and emigrated to the United States in 1984. She attended Beijing Teachers College in 1975 and studied mural painting as a graduate student at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in...

, John Beech, and Maria Porges;
1990: Nayland Blake
Nayland Blake
Nayland Blake is an artist whose mixed-media work has been variously described as disturbing, provocative, elusive, tormented, sinister, hysterical, brutal, and tender....

and John Meyer;
1988: Susan Marie Dopp;
1987: Anna Valentina Murch ;
1986: Ev Thomas;
1985: Richard Overstreet and Rick Soss;
1984: Larry Thomas;
1983: Clay Jensen;
1981: Marc Katano, George Lawson, and Margaret Rinkovsky;
1980: Squeak Carnwath
Squeak Carnwath
Squeak Carnwath is a contemporary American painter. She received her MFA from California College of Arts and Crafts in 1977. She is a Professor of Art at the University of California, Berkeley, where she has taught since 1982, having previously taught at California College of Arts and Crafts and...

, Suzanne Hanson, and Seth Seiderman;
1978: Milton Komisar;
1977: David Best, Michael Cooper, Glenn Jampol, and Miklos Pogany;
1976: David Maclay;
1975: Cheryl Bowers (Ciel Bergman), Lucian Octavius Pompili, and Cornelia Schulz;
1974: Charles Garoian, Jerome Johnson, David Jones, Bryan Rogers, and
Mary Snowden;
1973: David Anderson, Special Recognition: David Jones, Jim Pomeroy
Jim Pomeroy (artist)
James C. Pomeroy was an American artist whose practice spanned a variety of media including performance art, sound art, photography, installation art, sculpture, and video art.-Career:...

;
1971: Wayne E. Campbell;
1970: James Reineking;
1969: William Allan;
1968: Peter Zecher;
1967: Mel Henderson

List of other SECA Awards

2001 SECA Experimental Design Award exhibition:
Thom Faulders, Donald Fortescue, and Post Tool Design

1998 9th SECA Award for Film screening: John Turk, Corey Ohama, David Sherman; and Jay Rosenblatt

1996 SECA Electronic Media Award exhibition:
Carol Selter, Rebeca Bollinger, Paul DeMarinis
Paul DeMarinis
Paul DeMarinis is an American electronic music composer, sound, performance, and computer-based artist.-Education:In 1971, Demarinis received a B.A. in Music and Filmmaking Interdisciplinary from Antioch College...

, and Jim Campbell

1992 SECA Video Award:
Barbara Hammer
Barbara Hammer
Barbara Hammer is an American filmmaker in the genre of experimental films and a professor at European Graduate School in Saas-Fee.-Biography:...

, Marlon Riggs
Marlon Riggs
Marlon Troy Riggs was a gay African-American filmmaker, educator, poet, and gay rights activist. He produced, wrote, and directed several television documentaries, including Ethnic Notions, Tongues Untied, Color Adjustment, and Black Is. ....

, Jonathan Robinson, Ed Rudolph, and Michele Zaccheo

1988 SECA Video Invitational Award exhibition:
Lawrence Andrews, Honorable Mentions: Paula Levine, Marek Pacholec, Alan Rath, and Lise Swenson

1990 8th SECA Film as Art Award screening: Sal Giammona Trinh T. Minh-ha
Trinh T. Minh-ha
Trinh T. Minh-ha is a filmmaker, writer, academic and composer. She is a world-renowned independent filmmaker and feminist, post-colonial theorist. She teaches courses that focus on women's work as related to cultural politics, post-coloniality, contemporary critical theory and the arts...

, Michael Wallin;
1987 SECA Film Award screening: Susan Friedman and Ruby Yang
Ruby Yang
Ruby Yang , is a Chinese American filmmaker.Originally from Hong Kong, Yang has worked on a range of feature and documentary films exploring Chinese themes as director and editor. Her work has been nominated twice for an Academy Award, winning once and received other awards including the Emmy...

;
1984 SECA Film Award exhibition: Michael Naimark
Michael Naimark
Michael Naimark is a media artist and researcher who often explores “place representation.”- Biography :Naimark helped found a number of prominent research labs including the MIT Media Laboratory , the Atari Research Lab , the Apple Multimedia Lab , Lucasfilm Interactive , and Interval Research...

, screening: Gunvor Nelson
Gunvor Nelson
Swedish artist Gunvor Grundel Nelson was born in 1931 in Stockholm, Sweden. Now living in Kristinehamn, Sweden. She has worked as an experimental filmmaker since the 1960s...

, Michael Rudnick, Michael Emery, and James Irwin.

1980 and 1982 SECA Photography Invitationals:
The invitational was intended to promote contemporary photography. Emerging photographers from the western half of the United States, who had not received national recognition, were chosen.
1980: Gay Block
Gay Block
Gay Block is a fine art portrait photographer, who was born in Houston, Texas.In 1973 she began photographing her own affluent Jewish community in Houston. She later photographed an older Jewish Community of retirees in South Miami Beach, many of whom were Holocaust survivors. Block also...

, Jack Butler, Vida Freeman, Sally Gall, Victor Landweber, Thomas Neff, Jane O’Neal, Susan Rankaitis, Gail Skoff, Wolf von dem Bussche, and Steve Yates; 1982: John Bloom, Lynda Frese, Paul Klein, Douglas Muir, Michael Narcisco, Jeanne O’Connor, Art Rogers, Thom Sempere, Barbara Thompson, Bruce Van Meter, and Laura Volkerding

1980 SECA Film Award screening: Bruce Conner
Bruce Conner
Bruce Conner was an American artist renowned for his work in assemblage, film, drawing, sculpture, painting, collage, and photography, among other disciplines.-Early life:...

;
1978 SECA Film Award screening: Gregg Schiffner and Dennis Pies;
1975 SECA Film Award screening: James Broughton
James Broughton
James Broughton was an American poet, and poetic filmmaker. He was part of the San Francisco Renaissance...

;
1974 SECA Film Awards screening: 1st Prize: Robert Bloomberg; 2nd Prize: Vincent Collins; 3rd Prize: Peter Hutton
Peter Hutton
Peter Hutton is an experimental filmmaker, known primarily for his silent cinematic portraits of cities and landscapes around the world. He has also worked as a professional cinematographer, most notably for his former student Ken Burns. Hutton studied painting, sculpture and film at the San...

; 4th Prize: Larry Huston; Honorable Mentions: Suzanne Simpson, Jeffrey Hale and Derek Lamb
Derek Lamb
Derek Lamb was an animation filmmaker and producer. While serving as Executive Producer of the National Film Board of Canada's English Animation Studio from 1976 to 1982, he produced the Oscar-winner Special Delivery, directed by John Weldon and Eunice Macaulay, and produced and scripted Eugene...

;
1973 SECA Film Awards screening: 1st Prize: Ron Chase; Finalists: Jeffery Miller, Horst Leissl, and Robert Burill, Honorable Mentions: Frederick Fierstein and Amnon Igra, Larry Lansburgh, and Steve Klocksiem

1970-71 Vernal Equinox Special Award: The $1,000 award was intended to introduce conceptual art to the public and to underwrite experimental projects in any medium. It was merged with the SECA Grant Award in 1973.
1970: Bonnie Sherk and Howard Levine (Portable Parks I-III);
1971: Terry Fox
Terry Fox (artist)
Terry Fox was an American video, conceptual, sound, and performance artist.-Biography:Fox was born in Seattle, Washington. At the age of seventeen, he was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s disease, later referencing the cycles of illness and wellness in several artworks...

1972: Stephen Davis

External links and references

Selected Online Reviews

Del Pesco, Joseph, "SFMOMA's SECA Awards Show: Trevor Paglen, Jordan Kantor, Tauba Auerbach, and Desiree Holman." Art in America, 2009 http://www.artinamericamagazine.com/news-opinion/finer-things/2009-03-03/seca/ (accessed 09-12-10
Melendez, Franklin, "The Art Issue(s): The Young and Hungry Have Arrived", San Francisco Onlinehttp://www.sanfranmag.com/story/art-issues-risk-takers (accessed 09-12-2010)
Miller, Rose; "Amy Franceschini's Victory in Gardening at SFMOMA", Worldchanging | San Francisco http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/005994.html(accessed 09-12-2010)
Nataraj, Nirmala, "SECA Award at the SFMOMA" SF Station (2005) (accessed 09-12-2010) http://www.sfstation.com/seca-award-winners-at-the-sfmoma-a1053
Spears, Lori, "New Sensation: SECA Art Award winner Simon Evans Keeps His Head" San Francisco Bay Guardian, January 2002 issue. http://www.sfbg.com/39/18/cover_art_simon_evans_interview.html
Scherr, Apollinaire, "Hide and SECA: SFMOMA seeks out local artists for a hit of exposure." Metropolitan, December 1998 issue. http://www.metroactive.com/papers/sfmetro/12.21.98/seca1-9849.html

http://www.metroactive.com/papers/sonoma/01.21.99/seca-9903.html

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