ANA MENDIETA POSTHUMOUSLY AWARDED CINTAS FOUNDATION’S LIFETIME-ACHIEVEMENT AWARD

The Cintas Foundation will present its 2009 visual-arts lifetime-achievement award to the late Ana Mendieta, reports the Miami Herald. Her sister, Raquelin, will accept the award at the Patricia & Philip Frost Art Museum at Florida International University. The Cuban-American Mendieta, who died in 1985 at thirty-six, is being recognized for her pioneering work in performance-based art and Land art over her thirteen-year career, during which she amassed a compelling body of work exploring issues of identity that elevated her legacy as a figure in contemporary Latin American and feminist art. The Cintas Foundation was established with funds from the estate of the late Oscar B. Cintas, a prominent Cuban industrialist and patron of the arts. Since 1963, it has awarded more than three hundred fellowships to artists of Cuban lineage who reside outside Cuba.