June 16th, 2026 — Civitella congratulates Pat Oleszko (CRF 2011, DG 2019), this year’s recipient of the Whitney Museum of American Art’s prestigious Bucksbaum Award!
Established in 2000, the Bucksbaum Award is given in each Whitney Biennial year in recognition of an artist included in the Biennial whose work demonstrates a singular combination of talent and imagination. The selected artist is considered by the jurors to have the potential to make a lasting impact on the history of American art, based on the excellence of their past work, as well as of their present work in the Biennial. The award is accompanied by a check for $100,000.
Pat was unanimously selected by a jury comprising of curators, art historians, and artistic directors of major institutions, as well as co-curators of the Biennial. Her win is unusual in part because her contributions to the Biennial are not recent creations. Blow Hard (1995), a gigantic inflatable green face pushing air into a trumpet expelling flames, and Footsi (1979), a video in which two fingers garbed in little shoes and socks move across the artist’s body, are some of the few artworks in the exhibition made well before this decade. Typically, the Bucksbaum Award,” writes ARTnews, “has gone to artists who produce new work for the exhibition, a snapshot of the American art scene as it currently stands that takes place every other year. (This year’s edition also places an emphasis on artists from locales impacted by American intervention, including Okinawa and Afghanistan.)”
In a statement, Whitney Biennial curators Marcela Guerrero and Drew Sawyer said that Oleszko had produced “one of the most distinctive bodies of work in contemporary American art,” adding, “Throughout the Biennial, it became clear that Oleszko’s work resonated not only with audiences but with many of the participating artists, who recognized in her practice a remarkable model of artistic freedom and invention.”
Whitney director Scott Rothkopf, also part of the jury, says in a statement in Artforum, “Pat Oleszko is a singular force in American art, who has delighted, inspired, and challenged her audiences for half a century. By honoring Oleszko with the Bucksbaum Award, we continue the Whitney’s longstanding commitment to recognizing artists whose work expands the field, animates the present, and opens new ways of seeing the world around us.”
Well deserved congratulazioni, Pat!
Photo by Elle Pérez (CRF 2026) at the 2026 Whitney Biennial opening.