Described as having a rare combination of grace and perseverance, a soft-spoken 92-year-old Detroit painter and activist has been named the 2024 Kresge Eminent Artist.
Artist Nora Chapa Mendoza is the 16th recipient of the award since its inception in 2008. The honor recognizes a lifetime’s contribution to the arts and the Detroit area’s cultural community. This year’s purse is $100,000, up $50,000 from last year.
“It’s an incredible thing to have happen in your life,” said Chapa Mendoza in a news release announcing the award, which is administered by Kresge Arts in Detroit, an office of the College for Creative Studies.
Kresge president and CEO Rip Rapson said Chapa Mendoza’s work has championed civil rights and the rights of women and migrant workers and has inspired generations of artists.
“Her work conveys a rare combination of grace and perseverance in the face of the innumerable societal obstacles placed in the path of an artist with Chicano and indigenous roots,” Rapson said.
“With deep ties to CCS and the Detroit community, Nora Chapa Mendoza is an inspiring example of an artist, educator and activist,” said CCS president Donald L. Tuski in a statement. “Her dedication to addressing critical messages about civil rights and Chicano identity in her artwork communicates important historical and current issues. It is an honor to administer the Kresge Arts in Detroit program on behalf of the Kresge Foundation and to celebrate Nora Chapa Mendoza as the 2024 Kresge Eminent Artist.”
Recently the Kresge Foundation decided to double the Eminent Artist cash award as well as increase the number of Kresge Artist Fellows and those awards. Later this year the foundation will announce 25 Kresge Artist Fellows, who will each get $40,000. Previously, 20 fellows were awarded $25,000 each.
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Also coming in 2024, Kresge Arts in Detroit will release a short film about Chapa Mendoza’s life, which started in a one-room house in Weslaco, Texas, just miles from the Mexican border.
“I thought it was a scam,” Chapa Mendoza said in a press release about getting the call from Kresge. “I still don’t believe it, that someone just called me up and offered me a chunk of money. It doesn’t really make sense, you know. I only do what I love. Every day I have to eat — I have to paint. Nothing special — just life.”
While there’s a lot for the West Bloomfield Township artist to celebrate over the next several months, 2023 was a big year for Chapa Mendoza, too.
Following her solo show, “Stage of a Life: A Retrospective” at the Scarab Club in Detroit, she was offered the historic club’s highest honor, an invitation to sign the beam. The first Latina artist to sign, her handwritten mark now joins that of Diego Rivera, Isamu Noguchi, Norman Rockwell and others, including previous Kresge Eminent Artists Charles McGee, Bill Rauhauser, Marie Woo and Shirley Woodson.
“Putting my name up there, I mean, up there with Diego, that’s tops. It doesn’t get much better,” she said.
mbaetens@detroitnews.com
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