Ralph Lemon

Ralph Lemon is a choreographer, writer, and visual artist based in Brooklyn and Philadelphia. His work has been the subject of exhibitions at MoMA PS1(2024) The Kitchen (2007/2015), Contemporary Art Center, New Orleans (2008), Studio Museum in Harlem (2012) and the Walker Art Center (2006, 2014, 2024). At MoMA, he performed in the Museum’s Donald B. and Catherine C. Marron Atrium for On Line: Drawing Through the Twentieth Century (2010); he organized the performance series Some sweet day (2012); and he led the discursive project Value Talks as an Annenberg Fellow (2013–14). MoMA published the first monograph on his oeuvre, Ralph Lemon (2016) in the Modern Dance series. Lemon is a recipient of four Bessie Awards (1986, 2005, 2016, 2025), two Foundation for Contemporary Art Awards (1986, 2012), a 2009 Guggenheim Fellowship and Doris Duke Performing Artist Award (2012). In 2015, he received a National Medal of Arts from President Barack Obama. He is the recipient of a 2018 Heinz Family Foundation Award and a 2020 John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Fellowship. Lemon won the Bucksbaum Award for his contribution to the 2022 Whitney Biennial. In 2025 he was awarded the ARTnews Award for Lifetime Achievement. His works are in the permanent collections of institutions including the Walker Art Center, the Studio Museum in Harlem, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Museum of Modern Art, Kistefos Museum (Norway), and the Nasher Sculpture Center and Hessel Museum of Art.