Hamza Walker Selected 2026 Recipient of the Audrey Irmas Award for Curatorial Excellence

ANNANDALE-ON-HUDSON, NY (December 10, 2025)—Today the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College (CCS Bard) announces Hamza Walker as the recipient of its 2026 Audrey Irmas Award for Curatorial Excellence, honoring outstanding curatorial achievements of individuals bringing innovative thinking, bold vision, and dedicated service to the field of exhibition-making.

Walker is the Executive Director of The Brick (formerly LAXART) in Los Angeles, where he has overseen the institution’s evolution into one of the city’s most vital nonprofit spaces for experimental and socially engaged art. Since joining The Brick in 2016, Walker has expanded its program through exhibitions that bridge contemporary and historical perspectives, including major institutional collaborations and critically acclaimed solo and thematic presentations that spotlight emerging and underrecognized artists. Most recently, Walker co-curated the landmark exhibition MONUMENTS (on view through May 3, 2026), presented in collaboration with The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MOCA LA), which decommissioned monuments with contemporary artworks to examine how symbols placed in public spaces have shaped national identity and historical memory.

“Hamza’s three decades of curatorial practice have brought forward voices and perspectives that challenge dominant narratives, create dialogue, and have left a lasting imprint on the field,” said Tom Eccles, Executive Director of the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College. “CCS Bard is thrilled to present this award to a curator whose practice reflects a shared mission of harnessing art to engage critically with the world around us.”

An independent panel of leading curators, artists, and museum directors selected Walker to receive the annual award, which is accompanied by a $25,000 prize. Walker will accept his award at CCS Bard’s Spring 2026 gala celebration and dinner on April 13, 2026.

The event, which is chaired by Abby Bangser, Richard Chang, and Thor Shannon will be held in New York City at The Lighthouse at Pier 61.

About Hamza Walker
Hamza Walker is a curator, writer, and educator whose practice explores the rhetoric of race in the United States, racial identity, and politics. Ever since seeing avant-garde concerts and performances in late-1980s Chicago, he has felt compelled to share a boundless curiosity about art. In the ensuing years, Walker has curated dozens of exhibitions ranging from solo to thematic exhibitions; from the production of new work to career surveys. Prior to his role at The Brick, Walker served as Associate Curator/Director of Education at the Renaissance Society, a non-collecting museum of contemporary art on the University of Chicago campus, where he organized landmark exhibitions with artists such as Kerry James Marshall, William Pope.L, Danh Vo, Gaylen Gerber, and Mai-Thu Perret.

Recent exhibitions and installations at The Brick include Elizabeth Paige Smith: Unshade Me Of You (2025); Gregg Bordowitz: This Is Not A Love Song (2025); The Absolute Right to Exclude: Reflections on and Implications of Cheryl Harris' Whiteness as Property (2021); and Postcommodity: Some Reach While Others Clap (2020). Walker holds a B.A. in Art History from the University of Chicago.

About Audrey Irmas Award for Curatorial Excellence
Launched at CCS Bard in 1998 to recognize groundbreaking visionaries in the curatorial field, the Award for Curatorial Excellence is selected by an independent panel of leading contemporary art curators, museum directors, and artists. The award is named in recognition of patron Audrey Irmas, who bestowed the endowment for the Audrey Irmas Prize of $25,000. Irmas is an emeritus board member of CCS Bard and an active member of the Los Angeles arts and philanthropic community. The award itself is designed by artist Lawrence Weiner, and is based on his 2006 commission Bard Enter, conceived for the entrance to the Hessel Museum of Art at CCS Bard.

Past recipients of the Audrey Irmas Award for Curatorial Excellence include Gridthiya Gaweewong (2025), Manuel Borja-Villel (2024), Adriano Pedrosa (2023), Valerie Cassel Oliver (2022), Connie Butler (2020), Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev (2019), Lia Gangitano (2018), Nicholas Serota (2017), Thelma Golden (2016), Christine Tohmé and Martha Wilson (2015), Charles Esche (2014), Elisabeth Sussman (2013), Ann Goldstein (2012), Helen Molesworth and Hans Ulrich Obrist (2011), Lucy Lippard (2010), Okwui Enwezor (2009), Catherine David (2008), Alanna Heiss (2007), Lynne Cooke and Vasif Kortun (2006), Kathy Halbreich and Mari Carmen Ramírez (2005), Walter Hopps (2004), Kynaston McShine (2003), Susanne Ghez (2002), Paul Schimmel (2001), Kasper König (2000), Marcia Tucker (1999), and Harald Szeemann (1998).

About the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College  
The Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College (CCS Bard) is the leading institution dedicated to curatorial studies, a field exploring the conditions that inform contemporary exhibition-making and artistic practice. Through its Graduate Program, Library and Archives, and the Hessel Museum of Art, CCS Bard serves as an incubator for interdisciplinary practices, advances new and underrepresented perspectives in contemporary art, and cultivates a student body from diverse backgrounds in a broad effort to transform the curatorial field. CCS Bard’s dynamic and multifaceted program includes exhibitions, symposia, publications, and public events, which explore the critical potential of the practice of exhibition-making. 
 
MEDIA CONTACTS:
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Email: [email protected]
                                                                 

This event was last updated on 12-10-2025

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