Sable Elyse Smith awarded the 2026 Suzanne Deal Booth / FLAG Foundation Art Prize

The Contemporary Austin is pleased to announce artist Sable Elyse Smith as the 2026 recipient of the Suzanne Deal Booth / FLAG Art Foundation Prize, a biennial prize founded in 2016 by The Contemporary Austin trustee Suzanne Deal Booth and administered by The Contemporary Austin. In May 2018, The Contemporary Austin and The FLAG Art Foundation, founded by Glenn Fuhrman, announced the expansion and renaming of the prize to the Suzanne Deal Booth / FLAG Art Foundation Prize.

As the recipient of the prize, Smith will receive a $200,000 award, a full museum solo exhibition that premieres at The Contemporary Austin in 2026, and travels to The FLAG Art Foundation in New York, an accompanying publication, and related public programming. The exhibition will be co-curated by Alex Klein, Head Curator & Director of Curatorial Affairs, and Julie Le, Assistant Curator, The Contemporary Austin. The presentation at The FLAG Art Foundation, New York will be curated by Jonathan Rider, Director.

The recipient of the prize is selected based on merit of past work, strong record of exhibitions, and the transformational impact the award stands to have on their career and the Austin and New York communities. A rotating independent advisory committee made up of curators and art historians selects each year’s recipient. The 2026 jury, led by Alex Klein, Head Curator & Director of Curatorial Affairs, The Contemporary Austin, included Dan Byers, John R. and Barbara Robinson Family Director, Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts at Harvard University; Valerie Cassel Oliver, Sydney and Frances Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts; Sofía Hernández Chong Cuy, former Director of the Kunstinstiuut Melly; and Christine Y. Kim, Britton Family Curator-at-Large, North American Art, Tate Modern, along with institutional advisor Jonathan Rider, Director of The FLAG Art Foundation. Smith is the fifth artist to receive the award. Past awardees include Rodney McMillian (2018), Nicole Eisenman (2020), Tarek Atoui (2022), and Lubaina Himid (2024). Lubaina Himid: Make Do and Mend is on view at The Contemporary Austin through July 21, 2024, and will travel to The FLAG Art Foundation in New York, September 13, 2024 – January 18, 2025.

“Sable is a prescient voice among her generation with a dynamic artistic background, and does not shy away from asking challenging questions. I’m eager to see how she will continue expanding the impact and possibilities of an artistic practice,” says Suzanne Deal Booth. “It’s an honor to play a role in celebrating artists who are at an inflection point in their careers, and to support them with the platform, tools, and resources needed to access different communities and garner well-deserved exposure.”

Sable Elyse Smith (b. 1986, Los Angeles, CA; lives and works in New York, NY) is an interdisciplinary artist, as well as writer and educator. Spanning video, sculpture, photography, works on paper, and text, Smith draws from the legacy of conceptual art and skillfully merges diverse visual cultures and architectural forms to spotlight American systems of inequality. For over a decade, she has explored how power in the carceral state of America consolidates and confines real lives; and how the carceral state permeates all aspects of American life. She utilizes seemingly neutral or banal entities to uncover the inherent violence within them as well as their connection to a larger system of inequality.

Smith’s work was recently presented at Regen Projects in Los Angeles, CA. The gallery’s first solo exhibition with the artist included a series of two new sculptures and several “coloring book” paintings analyzing the carceral state and practices of aesthetic subversion and aimed to deepen audiences’ understanding of how violence is named, identified, and located. In July 2024, Smith will be featured in the second annual presentation of Studio Sound at The Museum of Modern Art in New York, an ongoing series looking at art history through sound. Smith’s work will consist of a new musical composition, and video installation, in the form of an opera. The performance intertwines an unfolding love story between two Black women with the protagonist’s journey of self-discovery.

“The Suzanne Deal Booth / FLAG Art Foundation Prize is a signature program for The Contemporary Austin, one that embodies so many of our values and priorities including providing the opportunity for an artist to make new work and try new things, and presenting meaningful projects that spark discourse and joy for our audiences. At The Contemporary Austin, we believe that art holds the potential to transform the lives of artists and the lives of audiences and this is exactly what the Suzanne Deal Booth / FLAG Art Foundation Prize has done since its establishment,” says sharon maidenberg, Executive Director and CEO of The Contemporary Austin. “I am incredibly grateful that we have the opportunity to bring the work of a brilliant, thought-provoking, and distinct artist like Sable to Austin.”

“From its inception, Suzanne Deal Booth and Glenn Fuhrman believed this prize would be a remarkable opportunity to support artists, a sentiment at the very core of The Contemporary Austin’s and The FLAG Art Foundation’s missions,” says Jonathan Rider, Director of The FLAG Art Foundation. “That support is both a collaborative venture and a generous act—between patrons and between institutions—to combine resources and teams in an effort to better champion artistic practice. The prize also represents an unparalleled opportunity for both artist and institution to push each other forward, together. It’s an honor to be involved in every facet of the Suzanne Deal Booth / FLAG Art Foundation Prize, and I cannot wait to see how Sable transforms our institutions in this iteration.”