Smith Alumna Artist Wins Portland Biennial Prize

At the members’ opening reception for the 2011 Portland Museum of Art Biennial on Wednesday, April 6, five prizes were awarded to artists in the exhibition.

The Purchase Prizes were awarded four artists, including Siri Sahaj Kaur ’98, for her work titled Kristie (left). The Purchase Prizes are chosen by select members of the Museum’s Collection Committee and will become part of the Museum’s permanent collection.

The 2011 Biennial is the seventh in a series that showcases the best in today’s art world by artists associated with Maine, from digital video to painting, installation to photography, sculpture to prints, and more.

The three jurors—Jim Kempner, Owner and Director of Jim Kempner Fine Art, New York; David Row, a painter based in New York and Maine; and Joanna Marsh, the James Dicke Curator of Contemporary Art at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C.—chose 65 works by 47 artists culled from more than 900 applicants.

Other artists winning prizes were Philip Brou for Black Box; James Groleau for Arbil Rubia Riyadh and Sinjar Karbala Basra; and Don Voisine for High Time. The William E. and Helen E. Thon Jurors’ Prize of $4,000 was awarded to artist Michael Shaughnessy for Cascade, Current and Pool (For the Vanquished Falls of the Presumpscot River).

The 2011 Portland Museum of Art Biennial is on view April 7 through June 5 at the Portland Museum of Art.