The Pollock-Krasner Foundation Announces Photographer Toba Tucker as This Year’s Lee Krasner Award Recipient

Tucker can arguably be credited with reviving the social documentary photography tradition in the United States.

The Pollock-Krasner Foundation just announced contemporary American photographer Toba Tucker as the recipient of its 2024 Lee Krasner Award, which is awarded annually to an individual in recognition of a lifetime of artistic achievement. Tucker has worked in a lens-based practice for more than 50 years, often documenting Native American tribes, particularly the Navajo Nation, as well as Holocaust survivors and African American communities, and arguably revived the social documentary photography tradition in the United States. “Her contributions to the field of photography through her poignant images of the American West and Native American culture and history embody the power that art can hold,” said Caroline Black, Executive Director of the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, in a statement.

Tucker’s photographic investigation dives into the country’s identity multilayered stories and unravels the historical traumas that contributed to the United States as it exists today, documenting continuity and change in American culture through her work. Now, at age 89, her work uncannily feels out of time, yet it revives the American photography tradition, establishing some interesting lines of continuation with its history of documentation of the country. In recent projects, Tucker has captured the landscape of the American West, directly referencing the work of 19th-century photographers.

The Foundation also announced the recipients of its 2024 grants, totaling $3 million, which will support ninety-seven artists and nonprofit organizations in ten countries. Among the grantees are several institutions that have distinguished themselves by supporting artists at different levels. They include well-known New York pillars of the art world such as the International Studio & Curatorial Program in Brooklyn; Art Omi in Ghent; the professional organization ArtTable; and The Bronx Museum of the Arts.

Outside of New York, there’s the Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture in Maine, which has nurtured generations of experimentation among U.S. painters, including major artists like Lee Bontecou, Firelei Báez, Lauren Halsey and Alex Katz. International institutions that will receive grants from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation include the Musée National Picasso-Paris and the National Portrait Gallery in London, most likely to support projects that spotlight American artists abroad.

The history of the Pollock-Krasner Foundation

Despite their turbulent relationship, following the death of Pollock and toward the end of her life in 1985, the Abstract Expressionist Lee Krasner decided to establish a foundation that could support artists and cultural organizations internationally through their legacy. With the foundation, she wanted to not only ensure that her own work, as well as Pollock’s, would be preserved, studied and appreciated by future generations but also that their names would help support future generations of artists and art-focused organizations. To date, the Foundation has awarded more than 5,100 grants totaling over $90 million in eighty countries. The Foundation accepts applications for its grant program year-round.