2026 Driskell Prize Goes to Spelman Scholar Cheryl Finley, Recognized for Investing in Next Generation of Visual Arts Leaders

THE HIGH MUSEUM OF ART in Atlanta, Ga., announced art historian Cheryl Finley is the recipient of the 2026 David C. Driskell Prize. Finley is the Walton Endowed Professor and Director of the Atlanta University Center Art History + Curatorial Studies Collective at Spelman College.

The Driskell Prize is the first and foremost national prize dedicated to honoring contributions to the field of African American art and art history. Finley will be presented with the $50,000 prize on Sept. 19 at the David C. Driskell Prize Gala at the High Museum.

“With this year’s award, the High is honored to support Finley’s distinguished career that sits at the intersection of scholarship and institutional change. Through her influential work, she has continuously invested in the next generation of visual arts leaders across Atlanta’s HBCU landscape and far beyond,” High Museum Director Rand Suffolk said in a statement.

“We deeply respect her dedication to foregrounding Black artists and expanding how African American art and art history are exhibited and understood, efforts we have long been committed to through the Driskell Prize and our partnership with the AUC Art Collective.”

“Through her influential work, she has continuously invested in the next generation of visual arts leaders across Atlanta’s HBCU landscape and far beyond.” — High Museum Director Rand Suffolk

Cheryl Finley. | © Gediyon Kife, Courtesy High Museum of Art

A SCHOLAR, EDUCATOR, curator, and author, Finley joined Spelman College in 2019, becoming inaugural director of the Atlanta University Center Art History + Curatorial Studies Collective. After serving as a distinguished visiting professor, she was officially named Walton Endowed Professor in 2024. Finley also serves as director of Spelman’s Department of Visual Art and Culture, which offers studies across art, art history, filmmaking, photography, and game design.

The Atlanta University Center is known as the world’s oldest and largest consortium of historically Black colleges and universities. As director of the AUC collective, Finley is helming a visionary undergraduate program established to prepare students from Spelman, Morehouse College, and Clark Atlanta University for careers as curators, scholars, and arts leaders. Combining academic studies with opportunities in the field, the program is building a pipeline for HBCU students to connect with major museums and cultural institutions, such as LVMH, the luxury goods conglomerate, and the High Museum.

Finley spent most of her career on faculty at Cornell University, where she taught Africana studies and art history for more than 20 years. Since 2013, she has co-organized Black Portraiture[s], a global academic conference that convenes an international slate of artists, scholars, and innovative thinkers committed to the study of African diasporic art and culture. Finley holds a Ph.D., in African American studies and History of Art from Yale University (2002).

THE DRISKELL PRIZE pays homage to David C. Driskell (1931-2020), a pivotal figure in American art and leading authority on African American art. Artist Aaron Douglas hired Driskell to succeed him as head of the art department at Fisk University. Subsequently, he became a professor of art at University of Maryland, College Park (1977-1998), serving as the first African American to chair the art department, from 1978 to 1983. After he retired, UMD established the David C. Driskell Center for the Study of the Visual Arts and Culture of African Americans and the African Diaspora. Driskell helped build the field of African American art history and was a nexus for those who entered the discipline in his wake, including Finley who has said Driskell was a friend and mentor.

An impressive group of accomplished artists, scholars, curators, and museum leaders have been recognized with the Driskell Prize since its inception in 2005. Last year, Los Angeles artist Alison Saar received the 2025 prize. Prominent artists such as Rashid Johnson (2012), Mark Bradford (2016), and Amy Sherald (2018) have also been honored.

“Dr. Driskell was a friend and mentor, whose generosity as an artist, curator, scholar and educator continues to inspire my work.”
— Cheryl Finley

Finley joins an exceptional lineup of curators and art historians who have won the Driskell Prize. The first-ever recipient was Kellie Jones (2005), Hans Hofmann Professor of Modern Art and African American & African Diaspora Studies at Columbia University.

Over the years, honorees have also included Franklin Sirmans (2007), director of Pérez Art Museum Miami; Valerie Cassel Oliver (2011), curator of modern and contemporary art at Virginia Museum of Fine Arts; Kirsten Pai Buick (2015), professor of art history and chair of the Department of Africana Studies at the University of New Mexico; Naima J. Keith (2017), vice president of education and public programs at Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Huey Copeland (2019), now Andrew W. Mellon Chair and Professor of Modern Art and Black Study at the University of Pittsburgh; and Naomi Beckwith (2024), deputy director and chief curator of the Guggenheim Museum in New York.

Previous Driskell Prize winners Adrienne L. Childs (2022), scholar and consulting senior curator at The Phillips Collection, and Krista A. Thompson (2009), professor of art history at Northwestern University, are among those who served on the jury that decided this year’s prize. Finley is the second representative from Spelman to receive the Driskell Prize. Andrea Barnwell Brownlee, former longstanding director of the Spelman College Museum of Fine Art (2001-20), was awarded the prize in 2013.

Finley noted that the prize is particularly meaningful because it brings attention to the work she is doing with HBCU students and emphasizes the importance of continuing to invest in their future training and access to the arts profession.

“I am honored to have been selected as the 2026 recipient of the David C. Driskell Prize,” Finley said in a statement. “Dr. Driskell was a friend and mentor, whose generosity as an artist, curator, scholar and educator continues to inspire my work.”

Finley continued: “Coming at a time when funding for the arts and education has been met with historic challenges, the Driskell Prize recognizes the critical role of innovative pedagogy, collaborative work and academic excellence at HBCUs and beyond in catalyzing the next generation of global arts ecosystem leaders. This work continues because people and institutions choose to invest in it, protect it and believe in its value in creating access and opportunity for future scholars, curators and art leaders across the African diaspora. This work cannot and has not been done alone. Rather, it recognizes the essential role of coalition building that defines the Driskell Prize.” CT

IMAGE: Top left, Cheryl Finley. | © Gediyon Kife, Courtesy High Museum of Art

READ MORE In Memoriam: Curators, scholars, and artists pay tribute to David C. Driskell reflecting on how he influenced their lives and careers on Culture Type

BOOKSHELF
In 2023, Cheryl Finley received the James A. Porter Book Award from Howard University for her book “Committed to Memory: The Art of the Slave Ship Icon” (2018), which was based on her dissertation research. She co-authored “My Soul Has Grown Deep: Black Art from the American South” and “Teenie Harris, Photographer: Image, Memory, History.” Finley also contributed to several other volumes, including “Raphaël Barontini: We Could Be Heroes,” “A Picture Gallery of the Soul,” “Rediscovering Black Portraiture,” “Harlem: A Century in Images,” “Whitfield Lovell: Passages,” and “Frank Stewart’s Nexus: An American Photographer’s Journey, 1960s to the Present.” More recent volumes include the exhibition catalog “Photography and the Black Arts Movement, 1955-1985” and “David Ricci: Hunter Gatherer: Salvaged Stories of American Culture,” published this year. She co-edited “Free as They Want to Be: Artists Committed to Memory.”