September 03, 2025

Pioneering Artist Diana Thater Named Recipient of Artcenter College of Design's 2024 Lifetime Achievement Award

Award to be Presented at The ArtCenter Awards Ceremony on September 27, 2025

Special Conversation With the Artist to Be Held on October 4, 2025

PASADENA, CA – ArtCenter College of Design is pleased to announce that acclaimed artist, educator, writer, curator and alumna Diana Thater will receive the College’s 2024 Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2025 ArtCenter Awards ceremony on Saturday, September 27, 2025. The Lifetime Achievement Award is given annually to a distinguished alum who has demonstrated a lifetime of professional and creative achievement. Michael Govan, CEO and Wallis Annenberg Director of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) will present the award to Thater at the ceremony.

A 1990 graduate of ArtCenter’s MFA program in Art, Thater has taught at the College since 1995 and currently serves as the chair of the Art Department, where she mentors a new generation of artists, while maintaining a robust and internationally recognized artistic practice.

“Diana is a trailblazing artist who has challenged conventions and inspired generations of creators and students. She embodies the ArtCenter spirit which celebrates creativity, fosters innovation and encourages work that positively impacts our world,” said ArtCenter President Karen Hofmann. “With this award, it is an honor and a privilege to recognize her extraordinary career and lifelong achievements.”

“Since becoming chair of the Art Department in 2024, Diana has proven to be a formidable leader,” said Undergraduate Fine Art Associate Chair Amir Nikravan and Graduate Art Associate Chair Gabrielle Jennings in a joint statement. “She brings her extraordinary professional accomplishments and unique educational vision to both the graduate and undergraduate programs, mentoring and championing students as artists while strengthening ArtCenter’s standing as one of the nation’s foremost art colleges.”

One of the most important art figures to emerge in the 1990s, the Los Angeles-based artist has been a pioneer in the use of film, video, light and sound. Drawing from a range of sources, including literature, animals, mathematics, chess and sociology, her work challenges the boundaries of time-based media and installation art.

As part of a prolific four-decade career, Thater’s work has been featured in over 90 solo exhibitions, including Diana Thater: The Sympathetic Imagination, a landmark survey show at LACMA in 2015, and in more than 200 group exhibitions. Her work is represented in major museum collections around the globe, including LACMA, Los Angeles; the Hirshhorn Museum, Washington DC; the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; the Pinault Collection, Paris; and the Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Thater has been the recipient of numerous awards throughout her distinguished career, including an Art+Technology Lab Grant from the LACMA (2018) and the James D. Phelan Award in Film and Video (2006), as well fellowships with the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation (2005) and the National Endowment for the Arts (1993). In July of this year, she received a Milestone Grant from the Trellis Art Fund and was honored with a 2025 Art Award from the Museum of Contemporary Art, Santa Barbara.

Thater is currently working on a highly anticipated permanent public artwork for the new LACMA building opening to the public in April 2026. Her large-scale video projection work, shot this summer in Claude Monet’s gardens at Giverny, will be seen by thousands daily as they drive down Wilshire Boulevard and pass under LACMA.

“I suspect that as we look back at the 20th century, we will recognize that the greatest innovation in art was the moving image. When people ask me what the future of art might look like, I often say the future is now, just look at Diana Thater’s work,” said CEO and Wallis Annenberg Director of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Michael Govan. “Diana’s expansive practice pulls the moving image out of the screen and off the wall. Her time-based images shape the space around us and ask us to consider many different ways of thinking about our point of view.”

Thater joins a distinguished list of ArtCenter Lifetime Achievement Award recipients, including Hiroshi Sugimoto, Lee Friedlander, Syd Mead and Matthew Rolston, the latter who will be awarded the 2023 ArtCenter Lifetime Achievement Award at the upcoming ceremony.

In celebration of her Lifetime Achievement award, ArtCenter’s premier membership organization FullCircle will host a free special conversation with Thater about her career and work on Saturday, October 4. In addition, a special presentation of her work Peonies (2022) will be on view in the College’s Mullin Transportation Design Center. The work, presented on one large video monitor, is a still life of a bouquet of flowers filmed over the course of 12 hours and presented in one minute. Visitors to the College can also view Thater’s Natural History One (2019) in the lobby of its South Campus building located at 1111 South Arroyo Parkway in Pasadena. These pieces are two examples of Thater’s many studies of flowers and butterflies, a theme that recurs frequently throughout the course of her career.

EVENTS

The ArtCenter Awards (Including presentation of the 2024 Lifetime Achievement Award to Diana Thater)
Saturday, September 27, 6–9 p.m.
ArtCenter’s Mullin Transportation Design Center (South Campus)
950 South Raymond Avenue, Pasadena, CA 91105
For more information and to purchase ArtCenter Awards tickets, visit the event page.

FullCircle Presents Diana Thater: ArtCenter’s 2024 Lifetime Achievement Award Winner (A special conversation with the artist)
Saturday, October 4, 2–3 p.m.
Hillside Campus
1700 Lida Street, Pasadena, CA 91103
FREE, RSVP required
For more information and to RSVP, visit the event page.

Peonies
Installation
On view September 20–November 9, 2025
ArtCenter’s Mullin Transportation Design Center (South Campus), Ground Level
950 South Raymond Avenue, Pasadena, CA 91105
FREE
Hours: 8 a.m.–7 p.m.
Please check in with security when entering the building.

To further explore past ArtCenter Award categories and honorees, visit: http://www.artcenter.edu/about/alumni/alumni-awards.html.

About ArtCenter College of Design
Founded in 1930 and located in Pasadena, California, ArtCenter College of Design is a global leader in art and design education. ArtCenter offers undergraduate and graduate degrees in a wide variety of industrial design disciplines as well as visual and applied arts. Renowned for both its ties to industry and its social impact initiatives, ArtCenter is the first design school to receive the United Nations’ Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) status. Throughout the College’s long and storied history, ArtCenter alumni have had a profound impact on popular culture, the way we live, and important issues in our society.

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