Chicago Sculpture Exhibit:
Richard Hunt Award
Chicago Sculpture Exhibit
Richard Hunt Award
The Richard Hunt Legacy Foundation is excited to partner with the Chicago Sculpture Exhibit (CSE) for the biennial Richard Hunt Award.
CSE established the award in partnership with Richard Hunt in 2021 to bring new perspectives and added diversity to the large-scale public art world. The Richard Hunt Legacy Foundation provides financial support ($10,000) to emerging or mid-career sculptors for a new artwork, which is selected through CSE and sited at a prominent location in the city of Chicago. The Richard Hunt Legacy Foundation provides a juror for the selection committee, as well.
The biennial award is part of CSE’s mission to encourage a broader range of artists to design and fabricate large-scale outdoor public sculpture. Applications open during the fall, with installation in the spring of the following year.
Previous Richard Hunt Award Winners
2021
Thought Vortex
Gwen Yen Chiu
Thought Vortex is a 12-foot-tall welded aluminum public sculpture that captures dynamic, turbulent emotion in physical form.
Visually depicting a swirling tornado, or vortex, at its center, the work blends Gwen Yen Chiu's background in traditional Chinese calligraphy with metal fabrication to translate expressive, fluid gestures into rigid metal. Chiu created the piece as an artistic reaction to global anxiety, political strife, and the isolation felt during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Beyond winning the inaugural Richard Hunt Award, Chiu shared a direct professional connection with Hunt, having worked as a metal fabricator assisting him in producing his own large-scale sculptural projects in Chicago.
Upon winning the award, Thought Vortex was installed at the busy intersection of Lincoln Avenue and Halsted Street in Chicago's Lincoln Park neighborhood as part of CSE's 20th anniversary, celebrated jointly by Chiu, Hunt, and city arts leaders.
2023
Caminantes
Salvador Jiménez-Flores
Salvador Jiménez-Flores
Salvador Jiménez-Flores
Salvador Jiménez-Flores
Salvador Jiménez-Flores
Caminantes (Spanish for "wayfarers") is a 9-foot-tall public artwork created out of clay, cast bronze, and Cor-Ten steel. The piece stands on prominent, shining bronze feet that transition upward into a nopal-green, cactus-shaped body.
Conceptually, the work uses these two core motifs to commemorate the immigrant journey: the worn feet reflect the long, difficult path traveled by migrants, while the resilient cactus symbolizes setting down deep roots and enduring in a new land.
Situated in Little Village’s Manuel Pérez Jr. Memorial Plaza, the sculpture serves as a monument to the courage of those who leave everything behind to build a life in Chicago.
2025
Gifted to Me
D.Lamar Preston
D.Lamar Preston
D.Lamar Preston
D.Lamar Preston
D.Lamar Preston
Gifted to Me by D.Lamar Preston is located at the northwest corner of Stony Island and 62nd St., by the north end of the Hyde Park Academy High School campus in the Woodlawn Neighborhood.
Gifted to Me is an 8' x 5' x 5’ 650 lb. sculpture composed of individual sheets of oxidized steel. Preston said that “the inspiration behind Gifted to Me is Richard Hunt himself. Using what I learned working with he and his team is my best way to honor and show my appreciation for the opportunity to work with a master. Not only a symbolic representation of gifts, I used tools and some repurposed steel I received from Richard to create this work.”
The sculpture will be exhibited through May 2027.