The Meadows Museum, SMU, announces that Vicki Meek has won the 2023 Moss/Chumley North Texas Artist Award. The award is given annually to an outstanding North Texas artist who has exhibited professionally for at least ten years and has established a proven track record as a community advocate for the visual arts. The award brings a $3,000 cash prize.
Meek is a Dallas-based multi-media artist/curator whose work seeks to reclaim a lost memory and cultural context by exploring her African heritage and gaining insight into how her ancestors fostered a spiritual and collaborative community and society. Utilizing a mix of contemporary images and traditional West African iconography, Meek has “developed a visual language that affirms the ancestral African in [her] DNA while exploring the American manifestation of it in real-time.” (from the artist’s statement)
Vicki Meek has curated more than 125 exhibitions within Texas. She has mentored numerous local artists and served on the advisory boards of Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing & Visual Arts and Teatro Dallas. She served on the Board of Directors for Dallas Video Association and D-Art Visual Art Center, where she was also the former Executive Director. Meek writes cultural criticism for Dallas Weekly with her blog “Art & Racenotes” and wrote a monthly column, “ARTiculate,” for TheaterJones, an online performing arts magazine. Vicki Meek served at the South Dallas Cultural Center for 20 years before retiring as manager in 2016.
“Jim Chumley and Frank Moss were stalwart supporters of Texas artists and did all they could to promote those artists within and beyond Texas,” said Meek. “I like to think my work in arts administration here in Texas did the same, so I’m honored to be recognized with the Moss/Chumley Award because our missions certainly aligned. Having my art, art practice, and community service all acknowledged in one award, is especially rewarding.”
Meek’s public commissions include three light rail stations for Dallas Area Rapid Transit (Forest Lane, Park Lane and Hatcher Street stations), and two installations for the Nasher Sculpture Center, one being a site-specific installation commissioned as a part of the NasherXChange 10th Anniversary Celebration, permanently installed on the Paul Quinn College campus. She was a Co-project artist with Brad Goldberg for the Dallas Convention Center Public Art Project. Meek has exhibited at museums nationwide and her art is among the collections of the African American Museum of Dallas; Fort Wayne Museum of Art, Fort Wayne, IN; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Norwalk Community College, Norwalk, CT; and Paul Quinn College, Dallas, TX. Meek’s work has been recognized with numerous grants and awards, including 2021 Texas Artist of the Year from the Art League of Houston, TACA 2021 Pop-up Grant, National Endowment for the Arts NFRIG Grant, Dallas Observer MasterMind Award, Dallas Museum of Art Otis and Velma Davis Dozier Travel Grant, Texas Black Filmmakers Mission Award, Women of Visionary Influence Mentor Award, and Dallas Women’s Foundation Maura Award. She served as an adjunct faculty member for UMass Arts Extension Program in Amherst, Massachusetts, where she taught a course in Cultural Equity in the Arts. In 2016, Meek was selected to be a Fellow in the Intercultural Leadership Institute and became an ExComm Board Member of Alternate Roots, a national artist service organization.
Nancy Cohen Israel, arts writer and educator for the Meadows Museum and jury member, stated, “Vicki Meek’s decades-long commitment to the Dallas art world embodies the spirit of the Moss/Chumley Award. Between her own thought-provoking artistic practices as well as her dedicated work as a teacher, activist, and non-profit leader, Vicki’s depth of experience honors the legacy of the award while bringing an illuminating and enriching perspective to the Meadows Museum.”
The jury for the 2023 Moss/Chumley Award included Israel, as noted above; University of North Texas professors Laura Evans and Angela Gonzalez Hall; Tamara Johnson, 2022 Moss/Chumley recipient; Texas Vignette Art Fair Manager Danielle Naylor; Miranda Saylor, and Olivia Turner from the Meadows Museum; and Texas Christian University Gallery Manager Kay Seedig.
Moss/Chumley Memorial Fund and Artist Award
The Moss/Chumley Memorial Fund was created in 1989 by Frank Moss and the Meadows Museum as a tribute to Jim Chumley; Moss’s name was added to the fund upon his death in 1991. Moss and Chumley were two Dallas art dealers who made outstanding contributions to the visual arts in North Texas during the 1980s. The pair operated the Nimbus Gallery on Routh Street from 1980 to 1987 and the Moss/Chumley Gallery at the Crescent Court from 1986 to 1989, where they showcased numerous new artists.
Established in 1995, the Moss/Chumley Artist Award is given in their memory. The award—which carries a cash prize of $3,000—is open to artists working in any medium who live in one of the eleven North Texas counties: Collin, Dallas, Denton, Ellis, Hunt, Johnson, Kaufman, Parker, Rockwall, Tarrant, and Wise.
Past recipients include Tamara Johnson, Alicia Eggert, Bernardo Vallarino, Carolyn Sortor, Giovanni Valderas, Sedrick Huckaby, Annette Lawrence, Darryl Lauster, Christopher Blay, Stephen Lapthisophon, Frances Bagley, Isabelle du Toit, Juliette McCullough, David McCullough, Noah Simblist, Catherine Chauvin, Ludwig Schwarz, Janet Tyson, David Dreyer, Marie Van Arsdale, Sherry Owens, Kaleta Doolin, David Hickman, Tracy Hicks, Mary Vernon, Marilyn Waligore, Susan Kae Grant, and Bob Nunn.
About the Meadows Museum
The Meadows Museum is the leading U.S. institution focused on studying and presenting the art of Spain. In 1962, Dallas businessman and philanthropist Algur H. Meadows donated his private collection of Spanish paintings and funds to start a museum at Southern Methodist University. The museum opened to the public in 1965, marking the first step in fulfilling Meadows’s vision to create “a small Prado for Texas.” Today, the Meadows is home to one of the largest and most comprehensive collections of Spanish art outside of Spain. The collection spans from the 10th to the 21st centuries and includes medieval objects, Renaissance and Baroque sculptures, and major paintings by Golden Age and modern masters.