Honored for his long-term, passionate commitment to supporting artists throughout their careers, for his prolific curatorial and writing career, and for his insight which he shares through his research, exhibitions, writings, and pioneering work at White Columns.
Born in the U.K., Higgs trained and worked as an artist before also becoming known for his independent publishing and curatorial projects that raised the profile of emerging artists through the 1990s. In 2001 he relocated to the U.S., to San Francisco, where he became curator of the Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts at the California College of the Arts, and later the co-chair of the College’s MFA program. He now lives and works in New York where for the last nine years he has been director of the non-profit art space, White Columns.
For more than 20 years, Higgs has shown consistent ways to supports artists, artist-groups, and curators, through his writing, interviews, curating, and teaching, as well as his reinvention and on-going development of White Columns as a space for people to experiment with the presentation of new ideas and work. Since 1992 he has organized over 250 artists projects and exhibitions, and written for more than 50 publications and art magazines. He is tirelessly making studio visits and proposing projects with new and overlooked artists, including consistently championing a group of developmentally disabled artists from the non-profit organization Creative Growth by writing on their work and including it in many exhibitions.
