The multidisciplinary artist and musician Nicholas Galanin (Tlingit-Unangax̂), a member of the Sitka Tribe of Alaska, has won the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art’s Don Tyson Prize, a $200,000 biennial award given for achievement in the field of American art.
The prize, first awarded in 2016, celebrates individuals or organisations that “change the way we look at, think about or experience” American art. Previous winners have included the photographer and historian Deborah Willis (in 2022), the Houston-based organisation Project Row Houses (2020), Vanessa German (2018), a citizen artist who melds art and advocacy in her social practice, and the Smithsonia’s Archives of American Art (2016).
Galanin, who is based in Alaska, blends sculpture, video, performance, music, and craft methodologies, using traditional Tlingit forms and techniques to articulate contemporary ideas about Indigeneity and transformation. After learning jewellery-making and carving from his father and grandfather at the age of 14, Galanin continued his artistic studies at London Guildhall University and Massey University in New Zealand, ushering him into a prominent international career interrogating the visual legacy of colonialism. His work has been featured in globally significant exhibitions like the Biennial of Sydney, the Whitney Biennial and Site Sante Fe, and the music that he makes with his band, Ya Tseen, operates as an extension of his art studio, further exploring themes of Indigenous rights and sovereignty.
Galanin recently completed large-scale outdoor projects in Miami Beach, with Faena Art, and in New York City, with the Public Art Fund. Earlier this year he received a Guggenheim Fellowship.
“Receiving the Don Tyson Prize is a profound honor,” Galanin siad in a statement. “My work seeks to disrupt colonial frameworks while celebrating Indigenous presence, knowledge and creativity. This recognition fuels my ongoing efforts to create art that sparks dialogue, reclaims narratives and envisions a future where culture, land and identity are protected and celebrated.”
The Don Tyson Prize is named for the late former chairman and chief executive of Tyson Foods, and is a testament to the his family’s long-standing relationship with Crystal Bridges. The Tyson family endowed the museum’s Scholars of American Art programme and Don Tyson’s son, John H. Tyson, was a founding Crystal Bridges board member.
“Nicholas Galanin’s work is a celebration of the rich cultural heritage, spiritual beliefs, and deep connection to the land of Indigenous peoples,” Olivia Tyson, who is also involved with the museum, said in a statement. “He’s a bold artist who creates thought-provoking work. Nicholas has impacted the field through innovation, creative thinking and risk-taking.”
Galanin’s work was first highlighted by Crystal Bridges in 2018 in the exhibition Art for a New Understanding: Native Voices, 1950s to Now, the institution’s first significant exhibition of Indigenous art.
“In 2024, Crystal Bridges acquired two major recent works by Galanin and received a gift of a 2018 work from a significant collection,” Olivia Walton, the chair of Crystal Bridges’ board, in a statement. “These artworks will feature prominently in our reinstallation and expansion, underscoring Nicholas’s influence on contemporary art and important role in the ever-broadening American art story.”
These new acquisitions—I think it goes like this (memory and interference) (2024) and White Noise, American Prayer Rug (2018)—will feature in the museum’s 114,000 sq. ft expansion, designed by Safdie Architects and projected to open in 2026.
