American artist Lorna Simpson, who pioneered a new approach to conceptual photography, has been named the winner of the 2027 Wolfgang Hahn Prize. The Museum Ludwig in Cologne, Germany, which sponsors the annual prize, will put €100,000 (about $105,000) toward the acquisition of a work by Simpson for its collection. A solo exhibition of her work will staged by the institution next year, accompanied by a publication.
The 2027 award jury comprised Naomi Beckwith, deputy director and chief curator of the Guggenheim Museum in New York, and artistic director of documenta 16, and the Museum Ludwig board.
Born in Brooklyn, Simpson rose to international renown in the 1990s with multilayered photographs that pair images with fragmented text. Her practice eventually expanded to encompass film, painting, drawing, and sculpture, often blending the boundaries between mediums while remaining focused on inner worlds and popular perceptions of Black women.
Her two-part photo-text work ID (1990) was included in Museum Ludwig’s 1999 group exhibition “Art Worlds in Dialogue (Kunstwelten im Dialog).” In that work, Simpson paired two portraits of a Black woman. In one, she turns her back to the camera; a plaque bearing the word “identity” is mounted alongside the image. The other reveals only the crown of her head, which resembles the Earth emerging from deep space. A plaque engraved with the word “identify” is mounted over this image. The museum’s catalog text from 1999 compared ID to the Black Madonna of Cologne, a famous wooden statute and site of pilgrimage housed in a 17th-century church near the institution.
“Her multifaceted body of work will provide, in the jury’s view, an important impetus for the Museum Ludwig’s collection of American art,” the museum said in a statement.
The statement continued that the acquisition “will further develop the positions in Pop Art and its use of media-influenced imagery, which Peter and Irene Ludwig acquired early on and in considerable depth.” The museum described Simpson’s work as “a bridge” to the practices of Diamond Stingily and Carolyn Lazard, whose works newly entered its collection through the Junger Ankauf initiative and “reflect on the self-image of African American women.”
Established in 1994, the Wolfgang Hahn Prize honors established contemporary artists with internationally recognized bodies of work who are not yet widely known in Germany. Previous recipients include Lee Ufan, Francis Alÿs, Kerry James Marshall, Betye Saar, Frank Bowling, and Haegue Yang.
The post “Lorna Simpson Wins $105,000 Wolfgang Hahn Prize” by Tessa Solomon was published on 11/12/2026 by www.artnews.com