Sandra Brewster wins T.O. art prize

Sandra Brewster, a Torontobased African Canadian artist whose work explores Black Canadian identity, is the winner of the 2018 Artist’s Prize from the Toronto Friends of the Visual Arts.

The $15,000 prize, awarded each year, honours a Torontobased artist for achievements of the prior year. Brewster, who also won the Gattuso Prize at the Contact Photography Festival last year, was featured in the Royal Ontario Museum’s Here We Are Here: Black Canadian Contemporary Art, which closed April 22. The two runners-up are Camille Turner, who was also featured in Here We Are Here, and Hazel Meyer. They receive $5,000 each.

Other prizes awarded includ- ed the $10,000 Founder’s Achievement Award to Vera Frenkel, an iconic senior artist who helped establish the Faculty of Fine Arts at York University, and $50,000 to the McMichael Collection of Canadian Art to establish a public lecture program connecting historical and contemporary art.