William Kentridge. ⓒ William Kentridge, courtesy the National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto.
On June 18, Kyoto’s Inamori Foundation announced that South African multimedia artist William Kentridge is among the three winners of this year’s 26th Kyoto Prize. Each of the three winners will receive JPY 50 million in recognition of their contributions to the fields of philosophy, the arts, science and technology. The subject of a large-scale survey exhibition organized in 2009 by the National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto, Kentridge is the recipient in the Arts and Philosophy category. The survey exhibition, entitled “What We See & What We Know: Thinking About History & Thus the Drawings Began to Move,” featured all of Kentridge’s major animated projection works to date as well as original drawings and installations, and in early 2010 toured to the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, and the Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art.
A statement from the Inamori Foundation, which was established by Kazuo Inamori, founder of the Kyocera and KDDI corporations, commended Kentridge for creating a new mode of expression through his “moving drawings” and for his ability to bridge specific, personal interests and universal concerns. Also receiving prizes are the Japanese physician and stem cell researcher Shinya Yamanaka and the Hungarian mathematician László Lovász. The prizes will be officially conferred in a ceremony scheduled for November 10 of this year.