The Francis J. Greenburger Award is an unrestricted $10,000 prize that honors established artists whom the art world knows to be of extraordinary merit but who have not been fully recognized by the public. For each cycle of the award, Francis J. Greenburger invites a renowned artist, gallerist, writer, museum professional and collector to each select one recipient whom they believe to fulfill the mission of the award. The awards, totaling $50,000, are presented at a ceremony in New York City.

The award was most recently presented in a ceremony at the New Museum on March 12, 2013. The distinguished group of artists and presenters included: Bruce Porter, selected by artist Frank Stella, Peter Saul, selected by gallerist Mary Boone, Jonas Mekas, selected by writer, artist, and publisher Phong Bui, Richard Nonas, selected by MASS MoCA Director Joe Thompson and Elaine Reichek, selected by collector and patron Melva Bucksbaum.

Francis J. Greenburger, Founder of Omi International Arts Center and Chairman of Time Equities, Inc. said about the 2013 awards, "This year's list of winners is extraordinary and offers a diverse look into what is going on in the contemporary art world today. We started these awards almost 30 years ago and have been inspired to continue them over the years to help today's new generation of gifted artists fuel their creativity and gain the recognition they deserve."

The awards were founded in 1986 after a conversation Mr. Greenburger had with his friends, André Emmerich and Clement Greenburg, during which André said, "The best and brightest artist of each generation are known, but not to everyone. Ask the inner circle and they can tell you." This statement is the inspiration and founding principle of the Francis J. Greenburger Awards.

Since 1986, 45 artists have been awarded the Francis J. Greenburger Award.

Bruce Porter's work addresses epic and mythological themes and juxtaposes them with pop and cartoon elements. Porter's work has been included in exhibitions at prestigious museums across the country such as the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Whitney Museum, New York; the San Diego Museum, California; the Gyeongnam Art Museum, South Korea, as well as prestigious galleries, including the Sundaram Tagore Gallery, Marian Goodman, Leo Castelli and Tibor de Nagy.

Frank Stella is a legendary American artist known for his paintings on shaped canvases from the 1960s and '70s, paintings on metal from the '80s, and more recent sculpture and public projects. In 1970, Stella became the youngest artist to receive a full-scale retrospective at MoMA. In 2009, Stella was awarded the National Medal of Arts by President Obama. Currently, the Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg in Germany is exhibiting a major retrospective of his work.

Bruce Porter, The Hamadryades, 2010. Copyright the artist, courtesy Sundram Tagore Gallery, NY.

Peter Saul is a figurative painter whose work is connected to, among other references, Pop Art, Surrealism and Expressionism. His brightly colored work was recently the subject of a two-person show at Mary Boone gallery and is in many museum collections and has been exhibited widely across the United States and Europe. He received a National Endowment for the Arts Individual Artist Grant in both 1979 and 1985. He was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1993 and was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2010.

Mary Boone is the owner of Mary Boone Gallery in New York City, a prominent gallery founded in 1977 that focuses on the work of innovative young artists, important established artists and influential historical exhibitions.

        Peter Saul, Shark in My Bathtub, 2011-2012. Copyright the artist, courtesy Mary Boone Gallery, NY.

Jonas Mekas is a filmmaker, writer, artist and curator who is largely credited with developing the diaristic (diary-like) form of cinema.  Mekas founded Film Culture magazine, wrote the legendary Movie Journal column in the Village Voice, founded the Film-Makers' Cooperative and the Film-Makers' Cinematheque, which eventually grew into Anthology Film Archives. Among many other important events, Mekas represented Lithuania at the 2005 Venice Biennale and recently had a solo exhibition at the Serpentine Gallery curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist.

Phong Bui is an artist, writer, independent curator (curatorial advisor at MoMA PS1 2007 - 2010) as well as the Co-Founder, Editor and Publisher of the monthly journal The Brooklyn Rail.

              Jonas Mekas, To New York With Love, 2009. Copyright the artist, courtesy James Fuentes.

Richard Nonas is a sculptor who was trained as an anthropologist. His minimalist objects and large-scale site-responsive interventions redefine the spaces of their exhibition by highlighting tensions, encouraging dialogue, and concentrating the power of the space. His work has been exhibited extensively in the United States and Europe. His work will be the subject of a solo exhibition at James Fuentes gallery in March.

Joe Thompson is the founding director of MASS MoCA. He has spearheaded its development into the largest center for contemporary and performing arts in the United States.

Richard Nonas, Edge-Stones: Wiere and the Middle Mountains, 2011. Copyright and courtesy the artist. 

Elaine Reichek is a conceptual artist who has been using thread as a core element in her work since the early 1970s, at first with minimalist line paintings made with thread on canvas, and more recently with embroidery and new-media works. Her work is exhibited extensively in the United States and abroad, including the 2012 Whitney Biennial. She was awarded an Art Matters Foundation grant in 2012, a Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship in 2011, a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2006, and a Tiffany Foundation Award in 1993.

Melva Bucksbaum is a devoted patron of the arts who sits on numerous museum boards and manages the Martin Bucksbaum Family Foundation, and is currently a Director of the Robert I. Goldman Foundation. In 2000, Melva and her children inaugurated the Bucksbaum Award, which is given to an artist of distinction and promise selected from those artists represented in the Whitney Biennial. 

Elaine Reichek, Who Besides Me, 2010. Copyright the artist, courtesy Nicole Klagsbrun, NY and Shoshana Wayne Gallery, Santa Monica, CA.

Guido Reni                                                    Elaine Reichek

Bacchus and Ariadne

Who besides me knows what Ariadne is! — For all such riddles nobody so far had any solution; I doubt that anybody even saw any riddles here.

— Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, Ecce Homo