The Los Angeles Museum of Modern Art announced Julian Charrier and: Cecilia Vicuña as recipients of its inaugural Eric and Wendy Schmidt Award for the Environment and the Arts. The award comes with a $100,000 purse and institutional support from a museum to develop an appropriately commissioned project.
The award that was was founded earlier this year by philanthropists Eric and Wendy Schmidt“biennially, the award honors artists whose work brings pressing environmental concerns to the fore and engages communities in thought-provoking, creative solutions,” the release said.
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Winners were selected by a five-member jury drawn from a shortlist of 15 to 20 nominees selected by a panel of experts in art and architecture, conservation and ecology, and more. Each candidate then developed a final job offer.
This year’s jury included MOCA Director Johanna Burton; John Kenneth Paranada, Curator of Art and Climate Change at the Sainsbury Centre; Carson Chan, curator of the Museum of Modern Art and director of the Institute for the Joint Study of the Built and Natural Environment; Maria Seferyan, Chairman of the Board of MOCA; and Dan Hammer, MOCA Environmental Council Advisor.
Although the award was originally intended for one artist, the jury decided after much deliberation that both Charrier and Vicuña had “unique yet complementary approaches to addressing environmental issues through art.”
The Schmidts offered to fund two awards so that both artists would receive the full unlimited
royalty. In 2026, Charrière and Vicuña will present their commissioned works at MOCA.
“Julian Charrière and Cecilia Vicuña are two extraordinary artists who have dedicated their careers and lives to illustrating the connection between environmental degradation and cultural memory. Their visionary practices, which engage deeply and clearly with history, materiality and society, are helping to transform how people view our relationship with the natural world,” Burton said in a statement.
Charrière explores our rapidly changing relationship with nature through field research in remote locations such as glaciers, volcanoes and radioactive sites, which informed her interdisciplinary film, photography and sculpture practice. For his upcoming MOCA project, he will examine the fragility and resilience of planetary water systems through a submersible installation.
Over the past six decades, Vicuña has re-adapted ancient indigenous Andean systems in his large-scale installations, performances, and poetry. His MOCA commission is based on the quipu, a pre-Columbian form of communication using knotted cords, as part of a larger series he has created with global communities since the 1960s. The prompt to “Dream the Return of Water” will facilitate the exchange of ideas, poetry, and political strategy among communities fighting for water rights in Chile and the greater Los Angeles area.
“The Schmidt Prize is a testament to the power of art to spark dialogue and inspiration around action.
The most important questions of our time,” Burton continued.
Eric Schmidt previously served as CEO of Google, then as Executive Chairman, and later as Executive Chairman of Alphabet. Wendy Schmidt serves as president of the Schmidt Family Foundation and the Schmidt Ocean Institute. The couple’s philanthropic efforts range from clean energy and ocean work to human rights advocacy.
“Science can explain our environment, but only art can illuminate it by cutting through the corpus of data.
to capture the spirit of our planet, our humanity and the deep interconnectedness we share with all life
around us,” explained Wendy Schmidt in her statement. “We’re excited to recognize not one, but two artists who are showing us what’s at stake in the future of our fragile blue world.”