An artist whose work was exhibited in Pittsburgh last year is a winner of this year’s prestigious Heinz Awards for the Arts.
The two national awards, announced Tuesday by the Heinz Family Foundation, went to Portland, Ore.-based multidisciplinary artist Marie K. Watt and New York City-based painter Jennifer Packer. Each received a $250,000 unrestricted cash award in recognition of career achievements.
Watt’s prints, textiles and sculpture have been exhibited around the country for decades. She is a citizen of the Seneca Nation and her work often draws on her cultural heritage.
In August 2024, the Carnegie Museum of Art opened “Land Stitches Water Sky,” her room-sized installation in its first-floor Forum Gallery.
Zachary Riggleman
/
Carnegie Museum of Art
In creating the commissioned piece honoring the region’s industrial heritage, Watt asked many community members, from museum staff to members of the Pittsburgh Poetry Collective, to contribute words they associated with the steel industry.
“Land Stitches Water Sky” consisted largely of fence-like stacks of I-beams bearing versions of those words, first hand-written by participants and then welded in place. “Land Stitches Water Sky” also included two textile-based pieces hung outside the gallery.
“I am drawn to the relationship between part and whole, call and response, individual and group,” said Watt in a statement. “Working with the community resonates with me as it connects art and life in a tangible way.”
Watt has incorporated I-beams into her practice for years. Earlier works have honored the Haudenosaunee ironworkers who helped build structures from the Empire State Building to the World Trade Centers. In 2025, she’s had solo shows at the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art, at Portland State University, and The Gund, at Kenyon College.
The Heinz Awards were created in 1993 to honor the memory of the late U.S. Sen. John Heinz. In a statement, foundation chair Teresa Heinz said, “We honor Marie for her thought-provoking work that graciously allows us entry to Indigenous traditions, culture and histories and to the application of that collective wisdom to contemporary life.”
Watt’s fellow 2025 Heinz Award for the Arts awardee, Jennifer Packer, is a figurative artist working mainly in portraiture and still life. She’s had solo exhibitions at London’s Serpentine Galleries, New York’s Whitney Museum of American Art, and The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.
Heinz Awards were also given this year in economics and the environment. A complete list of awardees is here.
