Artist, educator, and urban planner Theaster Gates has been awarded the Frederick Kiesler Prize for Architecture and the Arts by the Austrian Frederick and Lillian Kiesler Private Foundation. 

The 55,000 Euro ($65,000 USD) prize, awarded every two years by the Republic of Austria and the City of Vienna, recognizes outstanding achievement in architecture and the arts that relate to artist, designer, set designer, and architect Frederick Kiesler’s experimental and innovative approach to the arts. 

“Spatial platforms that highlight the contributions of Black artists and designers have been long overlooked,” says Theaster Gates. “Projects that consider people as much as they consider the implications of the built form deserve merit. I’m so grateful to be part of this precedent and honored that the selection committee would acknowledge my practice as part of the amazing work by luminaries who have received this award in the past. I’m thankful to all who have supported my practice both within museums and on the street.”

The Kiesler Prize jury included: Elizabeth Diller, Diller Scofidio + Renfro, New York; the jury chairperson Bettina Götz, ARTEC Architekten, Vienna; Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Paris; Anab Jain, Superflux, London and the University of Applied Arts Vienna; and Wolfgang Tschapeller, Wolfgang Tschapeller ZT GmbH and the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna.

“By awarding the Kiesler Prize to Theaster Gates, the jury is acknowledging a concept artist who does not work inside the established architectural system or art world but who has found agency through his highly unusual and idiosyncratic practice,” says the Kiesler Prize jury. “His artistic approach is characterized by transdisciplinarity, respect, inclusion, and participative processes. The most important objectives of his work are social change, spatial transformation, and empowerment. By imbuing this work with both an impressive aesthetic value and a social agenda, he has found a meaningful role for contemporary architecture. In this way, Theaster Gates connects Frederick Kiesler’s historic position with the urgent questions of our time.”

The official presentation of the award by Vienna’s Executive City Councilor for Cultural Affairs and Science, Veronica Kaup-Hasler, is scheduled for late fall 2021.