Jennie C. Jones named winner of Rose Art Museum’s Perlmutter Award

The award and residency recognizes an emerging artist’s achievement

Brooklyn-based artist Jennie C. Jones has been named the winner of the 2017 Ruth Ann and Nathan Perlmutter Artist-in-Residence Award by Brandeis University's Rose Art Museum.

For her residency, Jones will create new work in response to the rich cultural history of the Rose Art Museum and of Brandeis, engaging the university community in the creation of a score inspired by Louise Nevelson’s 1967 retrospective exhibition at the Rose.

On April 29, this score will be interpreted and performed by Brandeis student and faculty musicians in the Rose galleries during the campus-wide Leonard Bernstein Festival of the Creative Arts.

Jones will give a talk about her work and the plans for her residency on March 22 at 5:30 p.m. in the Carl and Ruth Shapiro Admissions Center at Brandeis. The lecture is free and open to the public.

Drawing connections between art and music, Jones creates visual and sound abstractions that explore intersections between cultural and social histories. Through her work, Jones highlights the complex and often parallel legacies of the mid-twentieth century—from abstraction, Minimalism, and avant-garde jazz to the era’s seminal political and social shifts—revealing the unlikely alliances that emerge between the visual arts and music of the 1950s and ’60s. Jones describes her approach as “listening as a conceptual practice.”

The Perlmutter Award given in recognition of an emerging artist’s achievement and is part of the Rose’s longstanding tradition of promoting young artists. Its namesakes championed the interfaith movement and sought to empower Jews, blacks and other minorities. Nathan Perlmutter, who served as a vice president at Brandeis and as national director of the Anti-Defamation League, received the Presidential Medal of Freedom at the White House in 1987, shortly before his death. His wife, Ruth Ann, who has degrees from the University of Denver and Wayne State University, is a noted sculptor and painter.

Past honorees include Roxy Paine, Barry McGee, Xavier Veilhan, Dana Schutz, Clare Rojas, Alexis Rockman, Michael Dowling, Sam Jury, Dor Guez, Mika Rottenberg, Mary Weatherford, and JJ PEET.

“We thank Ruth Ann Perlmutter for her generous support of the Rose and for enabling us to bring Jennie C. Jones to Brandeis this spring,” said Kristin Parker, Interim Director of the Rose. “The Perlmutter Award allows the Rose to promote and explore the work of artists poised to have a lasting impact on their field. Jones’ residency will create a unique opportunity for creative intersections across multiple disciplines of our university community.”

Jones’ work has been exhibited at major national and international art institutions including solo presentations at the Atlanta Contemporary Art Center (2009); Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco (2011); The Kitchen in New York (2011); and Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C. (2013). Compilation, a ten-year survey exhibition of her work curated by Valerie Cassel Oliver, was on view at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston (2016), with an accompanying book published by Gregory R. Miller with essays by Valerie Cassel Oliver, Hilton Als, and George E. Lewis, along with a conversation between Jones and Huey Copeland. She was brought to the Brandeis campus in 2015 as part of the ART | BLACKNESS | DIASPORA project.