David Antin Prize
The David Antin Endowed Prize for Excellence in MFA Visual Arts provides student support in memory of Faculty Emeriti David Antin, to honor his extraordinary service to UC San Diego and his lasting legacy in the Department of Visual Arts. The prize is awarded annually to one THIRD YEAR MFA Visual Arts student who reflects David Antin’s focus on interdisciplinary work and/or the use of multiple mediums. The prize recognizes students who demonstrate true originality and creativity in their work, either as artists or writers in the field of art criticism.
The faculty committee of the Visual Arts department is pleased to announce the 2024 David Antin Endowed Prize for Excellence in MFA Visual Arts goes to Nathan Storey.
Nathan Storey is an interdisciplinary artist working in photography, performance, and printmaking. Storey’s work focuses on the relationship between printed matter and queer survival. His research investigates gay ephemera, fragments, and stains, entangling a boundless relationship between memory and desire.
We congratulate Nathan on the excellence he has shown in his research and productivity during his time at UCSD.
Congratulations Nathan!
The committee also wishes to recognize all the 3rd year MFA students for their exceptional work as presented in the Mandeville Art Gallery in February 2024.
–Professor Amy Adler
David Antin, a poet, critic and performance artist of lasting importance, passed away on October 11, 2016. He was 84. His background included undergraduate work in science and languages with graduate work in linguistics at New York University (his special project was the language structure of Gertrude Stein). He edited and translated several science and math books and pursued a career as a poet since 1955 and that of an art critic since 1964. He also served as the Educational Curator for the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston before joining the Visual Arts Department in 1968.
For four years he was Director of the UCSD Mandeville Art Gallery, assembling exhibitions of post-Pop representation (Katz, Morley, Estes, Wesselman), an exhibition of Nancy Spero’s Artaud Drawings, a video piece by Keith Sonnier, an installation piece by Richard Serra, and a performance by Joan Jonas, as well as a large group show of artists from the Fluxus group. He also started the poetry readings at UCSD, the recordings from which became part of the UCSD Library’s Special Collections’ Poetry Archive, which he helped inaugurate.
Antin began full-time teaching in 1972 and his courses covered such areas as the Structure of Art, History of Criticism, Tactics and Strategies, Theories of Modernism and Postmodernism, and Narrative Theory.