Art Overview / Curators on the Cusp • Emily Hall Tremaine Exhibition Award • Emily Hall Tremaine Exhibition Research Grant
the 2025 Emily Hall Tremaine Exhibition Award and Exhibition Research Grant recipients
The Exhibition Award was created in 1998 to honor the talent and artistic vision of our founder, Emily Hall Tremaine. Her passion for art and support of living artists inspired, challenged, and brought joy to those around her. The Exhibition Award continues to reflect Emily Hall Tremaine’s trailblazing spirit by supporting thematic exhibitions of contemporary art that are fresh and experimental in nature. The full scope of the Exhibition Award process also includes exhibition research support in the field of contemporary. There are two exhibition research awards for 2025.
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The 2025 recipient is... Exhibition: Educational Complex: Radical Love, Life, and Learning Lead Curator: Johanna Burton, Maurice Marciano Director Institution: Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), Los Angeles, CA |
“Educational Complex” is a group show whose title is taken from a key work from 1995 by the late, Los Angeles-based artist Mike Kelley. A large-scale architectural model, Kelly’s piece reconstructs, from memory, the material sites - schools, childhood home, etc. - that shaped his psychological and intellectual development. Using Kelley’s prompt, the exhibition surveys the deep but largely under-recognized impact of education in its broadest sense from the 1960s to the present, as it has provided the institutional frameworks for artists to work; their social contexts; and opportunities for radically experimental methodologies and relationships. Using Los Angeles as a case study city, but not exclusive to it, concentrates the project geographically and positions the topic globally.
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The 2025 recipients are... Elissa Auther, Museum of Arts and Design, New York, NY Naz Cuguoglu, Asian Art Museum Foundation of San Francisco, San Francisco, CA |
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Curator Elissa Auther will research performing objects - colloquially referred to as puppets - in the intersecting worlds of contemporary art, craft, design, experimental theatre, and performance art as metaphors for human world making. In this exhibition puppetry will be approached holistically, focusing on the craft of puppet making and puppets as works of art in their own right; the design of performances and the puppeteering techniques that bring them to life; and the mysterious power of puppets as vehicles for emotions, thoughts, and actions often experienced as more real than our own. Puppetry is an inherently hybrid field of creative practice that cuts across the divides conventionally separating art, craft, design, and live performance.
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Curator Naz Cuguoglu will investigate how underground music scenes have historically provided spaces for political protest, queer and feminist activism, and cultural resilience against oppressive structures. By bringing together artists, DJs, and researchers, the project challenges Western narratives that reduce the SWANA (Southwest Asia North Africa) region to pain and suffering, instead celebrating its vibrant sonic and visual cultures. The research will highlight the intersection of Afro-Asian sonic traditions, digital aesthetics, and communal rituals, reclaiming the dance floor as a space of radical imagination. Focusing on artistic practices of immersive installations, archival materials, and live performances, this research will trace the global impact of SWANA rave movements while fostering transnational solidarity and challenging orientalist narratives.
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