Ceramics Alumna Karyn Olivier Among 2025 USA Fellows
Karyn Olivier. Photo by Ryan Collerd.
Cranbrook Academy of Art alumna Karyn Olivier (MFA Ceramics 2001) was recently named one of United States Artists’ (USA) 2025 Fellows. The USA Fellowship represents nine creative disciplines: Architecture & Design, Craft, Dance, Film, Media, Music, Theater & Performance, Traditional Arts, Visual Art, and Writing. Each Fellow receives an unrestricted $50,000 award and recognition as an accomplished and innovative artist in the United States and its island jurisdictions.
Born in Trinidad and Tobago, Olivier creates sculptures, installations, and public art. In the last year, she participated in the Whitney Biennial, Prospect.6 Triennial, the Malta Biennale, and unveiled a memorial honoring a formerly enslaved servant in Philadelphia. In 2025, she will unveil a memorial, commemorating more than 5,000 African Americans buried at Bethel Burying Ground.
Olivier is the recipient of numerous awards including the 2020 Anonymous Was a Woman Award, the Rome Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Joan Mitchell Foundation Award, a PEW Fellowship, a NYFA Award, a Pollock-Krasner Foundation grant, the William H. Johnson Prize, the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Biennial Award, and a Creative Capital award.
In addition to her practice, she is a sculpture professor at Tyler School of Art and Architecture.
Learn more:
2025 USA Fellows – United States Fellows
Award-Winning Alumni and Artists-in-Residence – Cranbrook Academy of Art
