The Wynn Newhouse Award is an annual prize given to disabled artists in recognition of their artistic merit.

History

The Samuel I. Newhouse Foundation, a charitable organization founded by newspaper entrepreneur Samuel Irving Newhouse, Sr.

Samuel Irving Newhouse, Sr.

Samuel Irving Newhouse, Sr. was an American broadcasting businessman, magazine and newspaper publisher. He was the founder of Advance Publications, eventually taken over by his son, Samuel Irving Newhouse, Jr..-Biography:...

, inaugurated the award in 2006 at the suggestion of Wynn Newhouse, to draw attention to the contributions of artist

Artist

An artist is a person engaged in one or more of any of a broad spectrum of activities related to creating art, practicing the arts and/or demonstrating an art. The common usage in both everyday speech and academic discourse is a practitioner in the visual arts only...

s with disabilities

Disability

A disability may be physical, cognitive, mental, sensory, emotional, developmental or some combination of these.Many people would rather be referred to as a person with a disability instead of handicapped...

 to contemporary art

Contemporary art

Contemporary art can be defined variously as art produced at this present point in time or art produced since World War II. The definition of the word contemporary would support the first view, but museums of contemporary art commonly define their collections as consisting of art produced...

. Wynn Newhouse, himself disabled, is a prominent New York

New York

New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...

 art collector and grandson of the newspaper magnate.

Recipients

In the past, four to five recipients have shared an annual award of up to $60,000. The selection committee is made up of Newhouse and four other prominent members of the arts and disability community. In 2008 the committee included the artist Chuck Close

Chuck Close

Charles Thomas "Chuck" Close is an American painter and photographer who achieved fame as a photorealist, through his massive-scale portraits...

, and Donna DeSalvo, curator at the Whitney Museum in New York.

Past winners include Katie Miller, an emerging artist active in the autism rights movement

Autism rights movement

The autism rights movement is a social movement that encourages autistic people, their caregivers and society to adopt a position of neurodiversity, accepting autism as a variation in functioning rather than a mental disorder to be cured...

.
To be eligible, nominees must be artists of professional standing, and have a disability as recognized by the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990

Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990

The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 is a law that was enacted by the U.S. Congress in 1990. It was signed into law on July 26, 1990, by President George H. W. Bush, and later amended with changes effective January 1, 2009....

. The awards are made in December of each year.

2006

• Riva Lehrer
  Riva Lehrer
  Riva Lehrer is a painter, writer, teacher, and speaker. Her early education took place at Condon School for Handicapped Children, which was one of the first schools in the United States to offer a standardized education to disabled children. In 1980, she moved to Chicago, where she has lived and...
  
  
• Terrene Karpowicz
• Jonathan Sarkin
• Darra Keeton
• Sunaura Taylor