David C. Driskell Prize Conversation: Alison Saar and Anni Pullagura
May 7, 2026 | 7–8 p.m.
Location: High Museum of Art, Hill Auditorium
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Join Alison Saar, the 2025 recipient of the David C. Driskell Prize, and Anni Pullagura, PhD, the Margaret and Terry Stent Associate Curator of American Art, in conversation around Saar’s contributions to the field of African American art and her exploration into the histories of the African diaspora and its artistic traditions. Saar was honored at the 20th annual David C. Driskell Prize Gala last fall and her works have been featured in hundreds of solo and group exhibitions worldwide, including at the High, which presented one of her first solo museum exhibitions, Fertile Ground, in 1993.
Established by the High in 2005, the Driskell Prize is the first national award to celebrate a scholar or artist whose work makes an original and significant contribution to the field of African American art or art history. It was named for the renowned African American artist and scholar David C. Driskell, whose work on the African diaspora spanned more than four decades. Over its 20-year history, the Driskell Prize has recognized artists including Ebony G. Patterson (2023), Amy Sherald (2018), Mark Bradford (2016) and Rashid Johnson (2012). Proceeds from the Driskell Gala support the David C. Driskell African American Art Acquisition Restricted and Endowment funds, which have supported the acquisition of 52 works by African American artists for the High’s collection since the prize’s inception.
Alison Saar
Alison Saar’s sculpture, prints, and paintings address issues of race, gender, and spirit. She studied art and art history at Scripps College and received an MFA from the Otis Art Institute. Her awards include the David C. Driskell Prize, John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship, National Endowment Fellowship, and the United States Artists Fellowship. Alison has work in collections at renowned institutions including the High, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Detroit Institute of Arts, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) and the Whitney Museum of American Art, among many others.She currently resides in Los Angeles and is represented by L A Louver Gallery.
Anni Pullagura, PhD, joined the High in November 2024 as the Margaret and Terry Stent Associate Curator of American Art. Pullagura is responsible for the growth and development of the museum’s collection of American paintings, sculpture, drawings, and prints by academically trained artists working in the United States from the seventeenth century through the 1960s, as well as related exhibitions and programs. Pullagura previously served as the inaugural postdoctoral fellow offered jointly by the Yale Center for British Art at Yale University and the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., while also serving as a consulting assistant curator at the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston (ICA/Boston). In her fellowship, she worked with colleagues on the research and interpretation of the museums’ pre-twentieth-century collections. She will work closely with Katherine Jentleson, Senior Curator of American Art and Merrie and Dan Boone Curator of Folk and Self-taught Art, and with curators of other collections whose holdings include works by American artists, on a major reinstallation of the American art galleries, set to open later this year.
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Join us for the Margaret and Terry Stent Distinguished Conversation in American Art as we reexamine the High Museum of Art’s American Art collection. Exploring the work of the nineteenth century Black and Indigenous sculptor Edmonia Lewis, this program features Anni Pullagura, Margaret and Terry Stent Associate Curator of American Art at the High in conversation with Shawnya Harris, Larry D. and Brenda A. Thompson Curator of African American and African Diasporic Art at the Georgia Museum of Art, and Caitlin Meehye Beach, Associate Professor of Art History at CUNY Graduate Center.