Guggenheim New York Announces Inaugural Jack Galef Visual Arts Award and First Recipient, Catherine Telford Keogh

The Guggenheim New York is pleased to announce interdisciplinary artist Catherine Telford Keogh as the inaugural recipient of the Jack Galef Visual Arts Award. The new biennial honor recognizes outstanding achievement and originality in contemporary visual art. Made possible through a generous gift from the Jack Galef Estate, the award supports and celebrates artists of exceptional talent whose work demonstrates innovation, depth, and vision. Selected by a jury composed of the Guggenheim’s Curatorial Department, Telford Keogh will receive $50,000 in recognition of her contributions to the visual arts. 

“The creation of the Jack Galef Visual Arts Award is a meaningful investment in artistic innovation. We are grateful to the late Jack Galef and his estate for this important contribution to contemporary art and to those who move it in new directions. Catherine Telford Keogh exemplifies the originality and depth this award seeks to champion, and we are proud to celebrate her as its first honoree,” said Mariët Westermann, Director and CEO of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Foundation. 

“I am honored to be the inaugural recipient of the Jack Galef Visual Arts Award. To be the first artist recognized by this award carries a weight I don’t take lightly. I am grateful to Jack Galef for his commitment to supporting artists at earlier stages of visibility, and for the encouragement this provides to continue working. This support will enable me to deepen collaborations and pursue the slow, uncertain research that has always grounded my practice,” said Catherine Telford Keogh.  

“Jack held deep roots in New York City, where he was both a teacher and mentor to emerging visual artists. He was an accomplished artist and advocate for the arts who understood the importance of investing in talent to grow and sustain the arts community. It is our privilege to see his legacy and passion for the arts endure through the Jack Galef Visual Arts Award and its first honoree.” said Jade Borgeson and Sandra Sindel, co-executors of the Jack Galef Estate. 

The Jack Galef Visual Arts Award is an unrestricted prize given every two years, in odd-numbered years, to support an exceptionally gifted, original artist, either a younger artist who has demonstrated great talent or an older one who is under-recognized. His estate also established the Jack Galef Literary Arts Award given every two years, in even-numbered years, and administered by the Iowa Writers’ Workshop at the University of Iowa. 

About Catherine Telford Keogh 

Catherine Telford Keogh (b. 1986, Toronto, Canada) is a New York–based interdisciplinary artist who works with sculpture, installation, and contingent materials. Following material and conceptual encounters that generate curiosity and a sense of unknowing, Telford Keogh examines how matter is held, crushed, preserved, and dissolved within systems of extraction and circulation that structure contemporary life—binding geology, infrastructure, commodity culture, and living bodies across otherwise incompatible timescales. 

Selected exhibitions include Greater Toronto Art 2024, Museum of Contemporary Art Toronto (2024); Shelf Life, Helena Anrather, New York (2023); Circuit Trouble, Erin Stump Projects, Toronto (2021); and Nervous System, Helena Anrather, New York (2020). Her work has been featured in group exhibitions nationally and internationally including those held at Bronx Museum, N.Y.; Canadian Cultural Centre, Paris; Fidelidade Arte, Lisbon; Franz Kaka, Toronto; Galerie Antoine Ertaskiran, Montreal; HESSE FLATOW, Amagansett, N.Y.; ILY2, New York; Interstate Projects, Brooklyn, N.Y.; Public Gallery, London; Seattle Art Museum; Someday Gallery, New York; and Thkio Ppalies, Nicosia, Cyprus.  

Telford Keogh is currently a Socrates Fellow at Socrates Sculpture Park, Long Island City, N.Y., and was longlisted for the Sobey Art Award. She holds an MFA in Sculpture from the Yale School of Art and an MA in Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies from Yale University. 

About the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation 

The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation was established in 1937 and is dedicated to promoting the understanding and appreciation of modern and contemporary art through exhibitions, education programs, research initiatives, and publications. The international constellation of museums includes the Guggenheim New York; the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice; the Guggenheim Bilbao; and the future Guggenheim Abu Dhabi. A “temple of spirit” where radical art and architecture meet, the Guggenheim New York is among a group of eight Frank Lloyd Wright structures in the United States designated as a UNESCO World Heritage site. To learn more about the Guggenheim New York and the Guggenheim’s activities around the world, visit guggenheim.org.