Hermine Ford received 2023 Murray Reich Distinguished Artist Award!
New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA) has announced artists Hermine Ford and Donald Lewallen as the 2023 recipients of its Murray Reich Distinguished Artist Award. The $12,000 award recognizes artistic excellence and provides resources to mature visual artists with a long history of creative practice.
With the support of an anonymous donor, NYFA created this annual unrestricted cash award in 2015 to enable the recipients to pursue deeper investigations or new explorations that can inform or enrich their work. It was developed in memory of the artist Murray Reich, a New York-based painter who also had a highly-regarded career as a professor of art at Bard College. This year’s recipients were selected by Amy Hausmann, curator and director of the Olana State Historic Site, New York; Sanford Wurmfeld, artist, emeritus chairman of the Department of Art at Hunter College; and John Yau, American poet and art critic.
“One of the greatest things about artists like Hermine Ford and Donald Lewallen is that their work is never done, they are always learning and growing,” said Michael Royce, CEO of NYFA. “We’re thrilled to recognize Hermine and Donald with 2023 Murray Reich Distinguished Artist Awards, and are grateful to our anonymous donor for encouraging their continued career evolution,” he added.
New York, NY, and Nova Scotia, Canada-based painter Hermine Ford reimagines the past through elements of architecture, earth, and physical memory, enhancing our contemporary experience in her meticulously composed painted shaped panels. Ford, who is in her 80s, has developed a distinct style honing her aesthetic since the early 1970s, exhibiting work at Furnace-Art on Paper, Falls Village, CT (2022); The New York Studio School, New York, NY (2019); 57W57Arts, New York, NY (2018); and Outlet Fine Art, Brooklyn, NY (2018); among others.
Group exhibitions have included Mosaics at James Barron Art, Kent, CT (2023); American Painting: The Eighties Revisited, Cincinnati Museum of Art, OH (2021); Red Telephone, Fierman, New York, NY (2019); and 1970s: 9 Women and Abstraction, Zürcher Gallery, New York, NY (2016). Her work is included in the public collections of institutions including Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts; Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, PA; Hood Museum at Dartmouth, Hanover, CT; Katzen Arts Center at American University, Washington, DC; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY; Provincetown Art Association and Museum, Provincetown, MA; RISD Museum, Providence, RI; Weatherspoon Art Museum, Greensboro, NC; The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; and Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, CT.
Ford studied at Antioch College and Yale School of Art. She was an instructor or visiting artist at the following: Parsons School of Design (1977-83); Maryland Institute College of Art (1981); Rhode Island School of Design (1983); School of Art Institute of Chicago (1984); New York Studio School (1992); and American Academy in Rome (2002); to name a few. Commissions include Johns Hopkins Hospital, Baltimore, MD (2011). In 2018, she became an elected member of the National Academy of Design.
On being recognized with a Murray Reich Distinguished Artist Award, Ford said: “I am very honored to receive this acknowledgement from NYFA. It is very useful to me as I continue to make my work.”