Jennifer Packer and Marie Watt Win 2025 Heinz Awards
147Sept. 17, 2025
Figurative artist Jennifer Packer and interdisciplinary artist Marie Watt have been named the recipients of the 2025Heinz Award for the Arts. The unrestricted $250,000 cash prize, established in 1993 and given annually since 1994 by the Pittsburgh-based Heinz Family Foundation to honor individuals making major contributions in the arts, is one of the world’s largest. Past awardees include interdisciplinary artist Gala Porras-Kim, ceramicist Roberto Lugo, filmmaker Cauleen Smith, Conceptual artist Sanford Biggers, cartoonist Roz Chast, Pulitzer Prize–winning poet Rita Dove, and installation artist Jennie C. Jones.
Packer and Watt each explore themes of identity, community, and connection. The Philadelphia-born Packer, who lives and works in New York, is known for works that reckon with the politics of visibility, identity, and mourning. Though she is widely recognized for her emotionally powerful portraits of friends and family members, she has also gained acclaim for her lush still-life botanical works, many intended as objects of remembrance, which are partly inspired by the events that spawned the Black Lives Matter movement.
“Jennifer’s work is at once infused with beauty and grief. Her paintings bear witness to our unfolding history, compelling us to move beyond mere reflection to a place of changed understanding and respectful connection to her subjects and their stories,” said Heinz Family Foundation chair Teresa Heinz in a statement.
Watt, who was born in Seattle and lives and works in Portland, Oregon, is an enrolled citizen of the Seneca Nation of Indians (part of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy). Through printmaking, sculptures, and textiles—especially blankets, traditionally gifted by members of various Indigenous groups to mark milestone events—she explores contemporary life and community-building through the lenses of Haudenosaunee feminist teachings, Indigenous knowledge, and her own family history.
“We honor Marie for her thought-provoking work that graciously allows us entry to Indigenous traditions, culture and histories and to the application of that collective wisdom to contemporary life,” said Heinz in a statement. “Marie’s art brings us joy, and her welcoming practice of engaging the community is a model and inspiration for creating lasting intergenerational connections.”
Packer and Watt will be honored alongside Heinz Award winners in other disciplines at a ceremony taking place in Pittsburgh in October.