Ronald Moody: Sculpting Life at The Hepworth Wakefield wins two Association For Art History Curatorial Prizes

Ego Ahaiwe Sowinski with Eleanor Clayton, Head of Collection and Exhibitions, and Farah Dailami, Assistant Curator, won the exhibitions prize for Ronald Moody: Sculpting Life. The team also won the curatorial writing prize for the book of the same name which accompanied the exhibition.

The winning exhibition, curated by Ego Ahaiwe Sowinski with Eleanor Clayton and Farah Dailami, was praised for how it illustrated the importance of the artist Ronald Moody, and his international art practice. The project was lauded for its exemplary presentation of Moody’s work, and it served as an important corrective within art history which rightly placed him alongside other great 20th century sculptors in Europe and in the USA.

The accompanying publication, Ronald Moody, Sculpting Life (pub. Thames & Hudson) was supported by excellent research woven into a compelling narrative of the artist’s life and work. New insights from archival material and from personal recollections of those who knew Moody helped to make the book an excellent read and essential for the study of the artist.

The Association for Art History annual prizes acknowledge the achievements and contributions of art curators in public museums and galleries in the UK. They recognise the essential work of curators in creating knowledge and sharing research with varied audiences, as well as in providing expertise about collections and the history of art more generally.

The Exhibitions judging panel also highly commended curators for two further exhibitions:

Clare Nadal, curator for Karanjit Panesar: Furnace Fruit, at Leeds Art Gallery. The panel praised it for its great sense of place, within Leeds and the North of England and, beyond this, for effectively contextualising objects in the exhibition within Britain’s colonial and imperial histories.

Leeds-based artist Panesar is the recipient of the 2023/24 Collections in Dialogue co-commission between the British Library and Leeds Art Gallery which is awarded to an artist in the North of England to undertake research into the collections at both institutions and use this to produce work that creates a dialogue between them. Furnace Fruit presents a new body of work by the artist which stems from his research into the Leeds Sculpture Collections at Leeds Art Gallery and the Henry Moore Institute, together with the oral history collections at the British Library and Bradford Industrial Museum.

Dorothy Price for Entangled Pasts: 1768-now: Art, Colonialism and Change at the Royal Academy. The panel commended this powerful, visually engaging exhibition which was underpinned by important research and included in-gallery interpretation of the highest level.

The AAH curatorial prizes are selected by a panel of esteemed industry leaders: Pio Abad (Artist), Maria Balshaw (Director, Tate), Antonia Bostrom (Former Director of Collections, Victoria and Albert Museum), Partha Mitter (Emeritus Professor in Art History, University of Sussex), Sandy Nairne (Chair, Art Fund), Alison Smith (Director of Collections and Research, The Wallace Collection), Luke Syson (Director, The Fitzwilliam Museum) and Sarah Victoria Turner (Director, Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art).

Winners and Highly Commended entrants will be formally acknowledged at a ceremony on Friday 16 May in London.