Professor Sarah Sze Receives Meraki Artist Award, Exhibits Work at ICA/Boston

In To My Best Friend, an exhibition that opened on January 23, 2026, Professor of Visual Arts Sarah Sze joins leading contemporary voices to celebrate the growing collections of the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston (ICA/Boston).

Last spring, ICA/Boston announced Sze as the inaugural recipient of the Meraki Artist Award, established to recognize the achievements of women visual artists and their contributions to contemporary art. Generously funded by Fotene Demoulas, the $100,000 prize was awarded to Sze at the museum’s annual Women’s Luncheon on May 5, 2025. 

Spanning sculpture, painting, drawing, printmaking, video, and installation, Sze’s work collages physical and digital material into sprawling, multimedia works.

Born in Boston, Sze earned a BA from Yale University in 1991 and an MFA from the School of Visual Arts, New York, in 1997. Sze represented the United States in the 55th Venice Biennale in 2013, and her work has been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions, including recently at Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas (2024); Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (2023); and Fondation Cartier, Paris (2020).

"It’s a huge honor to be the first recipient of the Meraki Artist Award and I’m inspired by the dedication to love, care, and art that the award stands for," Sze told the ICA. 

To My Best Friend celebrates over 50 artworks—which showcase a sustained interest in formal and material experimentation—that longtime supporters Fotene Demoulas and Tom Coté helped bring into the ICA Collection. 

Sze’s piece, Surround Sound (After Studio) (103" x 130", oil, acrylic, acrylic polymers, ink, aluminum, archival paper, Dibond, and wood, 2019) creates a dizzying landscape—or cityscape—of fragments. Accepting contemporary media’s proliferation of images as an invitation, Sze utilizes texture, color, and scale to warp distinct images into a delicately cohesive abstraction.

Sze is joined by Laura Owens, Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Olga de Amaral, and the 2026 Meraki Award recipient, Lorna Simpson, whose piece the exhibition is titled after. Together, these works celebrate the ICA's 90-year history, while continuing to set the tone for its future.

To My Best Friend is on view January 23–December 31, 2026 at ICA/Boston.