Nikita Gale, an interdisciplinary artist based in Los Angeles, has been awarded the $100,000 Bucksbaum Award by New York’s Whitney Museum of American Art. Gale was selected from the seventy-one artists and collectives featured in the ongoing Whitney Biennial, “Even Better Than the Real Thing,” which is on partial view until September 29.

Gale, originally from Alaska, focuses on the relationship between materials, power, and attention in her work. Her installations often use diverse materials like barricades, video, and automated sound and lighting to explore how structures that shape attention influence what is seen, heard, recorded, remembered, and believed. At the Biennial, Gale presented TEMPO RUBATO (STOLEN TIME), 2023–24, a player piano modified to silently play performances by various pop musicians, questioning the ways labor, performance, authorship, legibility, and sensing are influenced by technology.

Whitney director Scott Rothkopf praised Gale’s ability to create work that is both conceptually rigorous and emotionally engaging. He noted that by awarding Gale the Bucksbaum Award, the Whitney continues its tradition of recognizing artists who show great achievement and promise for the future.

The Bucksbaum Award, established in 2000 by the late Melva Bucksbaum, a long-time Whitney trustee, is one of the largest arts prizes in the U.S. Previous winners include Michael Asher, Mark Bradford, Ralph Lemon, Tiona Nekkia McClodden, and Pope.L. This year’s jury included Rothkopf, Biennial cocurators Chrissie Iles and Meg Onli, Hammer Museum curator Erin Christovale, University of Virginia art history professor David Getsy, and Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art chief curator Stamatina Gregory.

Sayart / Amia Nguyen, amyngwyen13@gmail.com