The American Art Museum has awarded Edyta Frelik the 2013 Terra Foundation for American Art International Essay Prize. Frelik’s winning essay, “Ad Reinhart: Painter-as-Writer,” offers a compelling account of the conceptual and structural linkages between Reinhardt’s extensive writings and the artist’s painting practice. Her text will be published in the fall 2014 issue of the museum’s scholarly journal American Art (vol. 28, no. 3).
Frelik is the fourth winner of the prize, which recognizes excellent research and writing by a scholar in the field of American art history based outside of the United States. The annual award, established in 2009, supports essays that advance the understanding of historical American art and demonstrate new findings and original perspectives.
Each year, an international review panel evaluates essays submitted for the prize following a call for papers. The 2013 readers were Eric C.H. de Bruyn, assistant professor of film and photographic studies at the University of Leiden, the Netherlands; Michael Lobel, professor of art history at State University of New York, Purchase; and Angela Miller, professor of art history at Washington University in St. Louis. The final decision was made from among the panel’s top-ranked candidates by American Art’s executive editor Emily D. Shapiro in consultation with a representative from the journal’s editorial board, Wendy Bellion, associate professor and director of undergraduate studies at the University of Delaware.
Frelik, a Polish citizen, is an Americanist at Maria Curie-Sklodowska University, in Lublin, Poland. In April 2013 she defended her doctoral dissertation “Painter’s Word: Thomas Hart Benton, Marsden Hartley, and Ad Reinhardt as Writers.” Her principal teaching and research interests include American film and popular culture and contemporary American art, especially artists’ writings and the intersection of literature and the visual arts. She has presented scholarly papers on Thomas Hart Benton, Marsden Hartley, Ad Reinhardt and Jasper Johns at conferences in Poland and elsewhere. Her essays have appeared in volumes published in Poland, Germany and England.
The essay prize is supported by funding from the Terra Foundation for American Art. A complete list of past Terra Foundation for American Art International Essay Prize winners and additional information about the award are available at americanart.si.edu/research/awards/terra. The deadline for submissions for the 2014 prize is Jan. 15, 2014.