2025 Helen Adelia Rowe Metcalf Visionary Award: Huma F. Bhabha 85 PR
Since the 1990s, Huma Bhabha has been known for layered and nuanced work that centers on reinvention of the figure and its expressive possibilities, as well as the vulnerability and strangeness of the contemporary figure. Her formally inventive practice encompasses sculpture, drawings, and photography. In monumental outdoor projects for public spaces, she uses bronze to stage large-scale meditations on nature, war and civilization’s ancient past and distant future. In April 2024, Huma Bhabha: Before the End, was unveiled at Brooklyn Bridge Park, New York. Presented by Public Art Fund, the four 8-foot bronze sculptures set in Brooklyn Bridge Park have been described as “seemingly forged in geological time yet animated with a visceral sense of immediacy,” by Public Art Fund Executive & Artistic Director Nicholas Baume.
The winner of many awards, grants and prizes including the The American Academy in Berlin’s 2013 Berlin Prize, Bhabha is a National Academician at The National Academy of Design in New York and was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Bhabha has exhibited her work globally in solo shows and group exhibitions, and her commissions include site-specific installations for the roof garden at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C. Her work is in the permanent collections of institutions including the Centre Pompidou, Paris; Tate Modern, London; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York and Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago.
Beginning in May 2025, Bhabha will be the first of three artists to be featured in Encounters: Giacometti, a two-person exhibition series at the Barbican Centre, London, that pairs works by contemporary artists with those by Alberto Giacometti. The series of exhibitions is organized in collaboration with the Fondation Giacometti, Paris among many others.
This award is the highest award by the RISD Alumni Association and honors Helen Metcalf, the founder of RISD, her visionary spirit, and civic generosity. The award recognizes alumni who have achieved outstanding distinction in their life’s work in a professional field, or in community, public or humanitarian service.
Huma Bhabha, 2022. Photo by Daniel Dorsa. Courtesy of the artist.
