From left, Amanda Fuhrman, Glenn Fuhrman and Suzanne Deal Booth at the Contemporary Austin. Credit Whitney Arostegui
The collector Glenn Fuhrman has long been interested in highlighting the work of contemporary artists — even those he and his wife, Amanda, do not personally collect — through his Manhattan-based FLAG Art Foundation.
Now the Fuhrmans are joining forces with Suzanne Deal Booth and the Contemporary Austin museum to create a new $800,000 artist prize that builds on the prize started in 2016 by Ms. Deal Booth, a trustee of the Contemporary Austin.
The new prize includes a $200,000 cash award, a catalogand a solo exhibition at the Contemporary Austin and at FLAG. The Suzanne Deal Booth Art Prize was $100,000 and was first awarded to Rodney McMillian.
“It seemed like a natural next step,” Mr. Fuhrman said in a telephone interview, “a way to learn about artists we may not even be familiar with.”
The artist will be selected by an independent advisory committee made up of curators and art historians, which this year includes Eungie Joo, a curator at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Helen Molesworth, who recently left the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles to become a critic; and Lilian Tone, an assistant curator at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The inaugural recipient, for 2020, will be announced in July.
Ms. Deal Booth and the Fuhrmans have committed to jointly fund four prizes biennially through 2026.