Kara Walker to be Honored by Brooklyn Museum, 11/4

Artist Kara Walker, best known for iconic cut-paper silhouettes that address such highly charged themes as race, gender, sexuality, and repression, will be honored at the eighth annual Women in the Arts luncheon on Thursday, November 4, 2010. Proceeds from the event, which is organized by the Museum's Community Committee, a volunteer organization, will benefit the many artistic and cultural programs offered by the Brooklyn Museum and its Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art.

The program will begin at 11 a.m. with an introduction by Museum Director Arnold Lehman, followed by a conversation between Kara Walker and Catherine Morris, Curator of the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art. The program will conclude with the presentation of the 2010 Women in the Arts Award to Ms. Walker. A reception and luncheon in the Museum's Beaux-Arts Court will follow from 12:30 to 2:30 p.m.

Tickets for Women in the Arts 2010 are $175 (Friend), $250 (Supporter), $500 (Host), $1,800 (Advocate), $3,000 (Patron), and $5,000 (Benefactor). For further information and to purchase tickets, contact the Community Committee at (718) 789-2493 or (718) 501-6386.

Walker was born in Stockton, California, and grew up in Atlanta. She graduated from the Atlanta College of Art in 1991 and received her M.F.A. from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1994.

The artist has participated in numerous national and international exhibitions. Her recent survey show, Kara Walker: My Complement, My Enemy, My Oppressor, My Love, traveled to the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, ARC/Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, and the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth. She has had other recent solo exhibitions at CAC Málaga, Centro de Art Contemporáneo de Málaga, Spain, and MDD (Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens) in Duerle, Belgium, both in 2008. She also participated in the fifty-second Venice Bienalle in 2007 and was the United States representative at the twenty-fifth International São Paulo Biennial in Brazil in 2002.

Walker has been the recipient of many awards, including the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Achievement Award in 1997, the Deutsche Bank Prize in 2000, and the United States Artists Eileen Harris Norton Fellowship in 2008. Her work is featured in a great number of museums and public collections, including the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Tate Gallery in London, the Centro Nazionale per le Arti Contemporanee in Rome, and Deutsche Bank in Frankfurt. She lives and works in New York City.

Previous Women in the Arts honorees include Kiki Smith, Cindy Sherman, Annie Leibovitz, Maya Lin, the Guerilla Girls, Dr. Elizabeth A. Sackler, and Dr. Mary Schmidt.