Image: Jenny Holzer, For the Academy, 2007, Castel Sant’Angelo, Rome. Text: The Joy of Writing from View with a Grain of Sand by Wisława Szymborska, © 1993 by the author. English translation by Stanisław Barańczak and Clare Cavanagh, © 1995 by Harcourt, Inc. Used with permission of the author. Presented by the American Academy in Rome. Photo: Melinda McDaniel
Jenny Holzer has been named the painting laureate of the 37th Praemium Imperiale, announced by the Japan Art Association on September 8, 2026. The award ceremony is scheduled for October 28 at Meiji Kinenkan in Tokyo.
The designation recognises an artist who has made language a public medium since the late 1970s. Born in Ohio in 1950 and based in New York, Holzer has used LED signs, posters, stone inscriptions and architectural projections to address power, violence, war and gender. Her ‘Truisms’ series, which brought brief aphoristic statements into public settings, remains among the best-known examples of that practice.
Satoru Tatehata, a member of the prize’s painting and sculpture selection committee, said Holzer had been recommended by international advisers for many years. He pointed to her use of short sentences to communicate social messages and said that the award came at an appropriate moment, as social contradictions are surfacing.
Although Holzer receives the prize in the painting category, the works documented in the announcement range across installations and text-based interventions. ‘For the Academy’ (2007), presented at Castel Sant’Angelo in Rome, used ‘The Joy of Writing’ from Wisława Szymborska’s collection ‘View with a Grain of Sand’. Her ‘The Venice Installation: First Antechamber’ was shown at the 44th Venice Biennale in 1990.
The announcement also recalls an installation at New York’s Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in 2024 that revisited a work originally made for the museum in 1989. That year, Holzer returned to the Guggenheim for a solo exhibition, 35 years after her earlier installation there.
Established by the Japan Art Association in 1988, the Praemium Imperiale is awarded annually in painting, sculpture, architecture, music, and theatre/film. Holzer’s first solo exhibition in Japan, ‘In the Forest of Words’, was held at Art Tower Mito in 1994.
