Getty Prize
News & Press MaterialsHonor awarded annually for outstanding achievement in the arts
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Established in 2013 and formerly known as the “Getty Medal,” the award recognizes leaders in the cultural fields whose work expands human understanding and appreciation of arts and culture. Beginning in 2024, the award will go to a single person who can then recognize the work of a non-profit of their choosing with a $500,000 grant from Getty.
2024
Mark Bradford
Mark Bradford is a contemporary artist best known for his large-scale abstract paintings created out of paper. Characterized by its layered formal, material, and conceptual complexity, his work explores social and political structures that objectify marginalized communities and the bodies of vulnerable populations.
Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth
Photo: Sean Shim-Boyle
2022
Alice Walton, Martin Puryear, Kwame Anthony Appiah
Editor’s Note: the Getty Medal honorees Alice Walton, Martin Puryear, and Kwane Anthony Appiah were announced in 2020 but, due to the Covid-19 pandemic, were not celebrated until 2022
Philanthropist Alice Walton is dedicated to expanding access to the arts and arts education to communities throughout our nation. Martin Puryear is one of today’s most influential sculptors. Philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah deepens our understanding of identity and cosmopolitanism.
Alice Walton
Kwame Anthony Appiah
Martin Puryear
2019
Lorna Simpson, Ed Ruscha, and Mary Beard
Lorna Simpson is a pioneering photographer and multimedia artist whose work contemplates what it means to be American. Ed Ruscha is a distinguished painter, draftsman, photographer, and bookmaker. Mary Beard is a historian, classicist, and one of the world’s premier public intellectuals.
Lorna Simpson
Ed Ruscha
Mary Beard
2018
Thelma Golden, Agnes Gund, and Richard Serra
Thelma Golden is director and chief curator of The Studio Museum in Harlem, the world’s leading institution devoted to visual art by artists of African descent. Agnes Gund is president emerita of the Museum of Modern Art and chair of its International Council. Richard Serra is an American artist known for his large-scale sculptures made for site-specific landscape, urban, and architectural settings.
2017
Anselm Kiefer and Mario Vargas Llosa
Anselm Kiefer is a German painter and sculptor noted for powerful work and complex subject matter. Mario Vargas Llosa is a Peruvian writer, politician, journalist, college professor, and recipient of the 2010 Nobel Prize in Literature.
2016
Yo-Yo Ma and Ellsworth Kelly
Yo-Yo Ma is an American cellist and ambassador for international cultural understanding. Ellsworth Kelly was an American painter, sculptor, and printmaker, who emphasized the importance of preserving natural and cultural heritage.
2015
Frank Gehry
Frank Gehry is an architect and designer who has produced iconic buildings in North America, Europe, and Asia. Among his most notable buildings are the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain; the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, California; the Jay Pritzker Pavilion and BP Bridge in Chicago, Illinois; Eight Spruce Street Residential Tower in New York City; and Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris, France.
2014
Lord Jacob Rothschild
Lord Rothschild is an investment banker and patron of the arts, dedicated to the preservation and public interpretation of historic buildings. He has served as Chairman of the National Gallery of Art, London; Chairman of the National Heritage Memorial Fund; Chairman of the Pritzker Prize for Architecture; Trustee and Honorary Fellow of the Courtauld Institute of Art; and Trustee of the State Hermitage Museum of St. Petersburg and the Qatar Museums Authority.
2013
Harold M. Williams and Nancy Englander
Harold M. Williams was the founding president and CEO of the J. Paul Getty Trust, serving from 1981 to 1998. His vision led to the creation of Getty as an institution devoted to scholarship, conservation, education and the presentation of the visual arts. Nancy Englander served as the director of program planning and analysis at the J. Paul Getty Trust from 1981 to 1986, and led the conceptualization and development of the initial plans for Getty programs and the Getty Center.