Georgina Kleege, the recipient of the 2026 Clark Prize for Excellence in Arts Writing, has built a career championing accessibility and inclusive approaches to art. Her work has redefined how audiences understand blindness, perception, and the visual world as well as ideas about who belongs in an art museum, what should or could happen in one, and why. Legally blind since childhood due to a form of macular degeneration, Kleege first gained widespread recognition with her memoir Sight Unseen (1999), a groundbreaking work that challenged conventional assumptions about blindness and reframed it as a complex, lived visual experience rather than simply an absence of sight. Her work has appeared in major publications and museums such as The New York Times, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and The Yale Review. Kleege is Professor Emerita of English at the University of California, Berkeley and is a revered consultant and educator at art institutions around the globe.
The Clark Prize for Excellence in Arts Writing celebrates informed, insightful, and accessible prose that advances the public understanding and appreciation of the visual arts. Recipients of the Clark Prize are distinguished for critical or historical writing that conveys complex ideas in a manner that is grounded in scholarship yet appealing to a diverse range of audiences. It is accompanied by a $30,000 honorarium and an award designed by Pritzker Prize-winning architect Tadao Ando, the designer of two buildings on the Clark’s Williamstown campus. Individuals engaged in all forms of arts writing, including criticism, commentary, monographs, catalogue essays, and biography, are eligible for nomination.
The Clark Prize is presented through the generosity of the Beinecke family through the Prospect Hill Foundation.
Image: Fayen D'Evie
Georgina Kleege, the recipient of the 2026 Clark Prize for Excellence in Arts Writing, has built a career championing accessibility and inclusive approaches to art. Her work has redefined how audiences understand blindness, perception, and the visual world as well as ideas about who belongs in an art museum, what should or could happen in one, and why. Legally blind since childhood due to a form of macular degeneration, Kleege first gained widespread recognition with her memoir Sight Unseen (1999), a groundbreaking work that challenged conventional assumptions about blindness and reframed it as a complex, lived visual experience rather than simply an absence of sight. Her work has appeared in major publications and museums such as The New York Times, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and The Yale Review. Kleege is Professor Emerita of English at the University of California, Berkeley and is a revered consultant and educator at art institutions around the globe.
The Clark Prize for Excellence in Arts Writing celebrates informed, insightful, and accessible prose that advances the public understanding and appreciation of the visual arts. Recipients of the Clark Prize are distinguished for critical or historical writing that conveys complex ideas in a manner that is grounded in scholarship yet appealing to a diverse range of audiences. It is accompanied by a $30,000 honorarium and an award designed by Pritzker Prize-winning architect Tadao Ando, the designer of two buildings on the Clark’s Williamstown campus. Individuals engaged in all forms of arts writing, including criticism, commentary, monographs, catalogue essays, and biography, are eligible for nomination.
The Clark Prize is presented through the generosity of the Beinecke family through the Prospect Hill Foundation.
Image: Fayen D'Evie
