The Brooklyn Museum awards UOVO Prize to Keisha Scarville

The Brooklyn Museum awarded the 2026 UOVO Prize—which recognizes the work of emerging Brooklyn-based artists—to Keisha Scarville (born Brooklyn, New York, 1975). Selected by a jury of Brooklyn Museum curators, Scarville is the sixth annual recipient of the prestigious prize, receiving a public installation on the Brooklyn Museum’s Iris Cantor Plaza, a commission for a fifty-by-fifty-foot public art installation on the facade of UOVO’s Brooklyn facility in Bushwick, and a $25,000 unrestricted cash grant. The artist’s first large-scale installation, Where Salt Meets Black Water, curated by Pauline Vermare, Phillip and Edith Leonian Curator of Photography, Brooklyn Museum, will open on the Brooklyn Museum’s plaza on May 8, 2026. “As a Brooklyn native, I am deeply honored to be this year’s recipient of the UOVO Prize,” says Scarville.