Thomas J. Lax, associate curator in the department of media and performance art at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, has been chosen as the seventh recipient of the Walter Hopps Award for Curatorial Achievement, awarded every two years. The award confers a stipend of $20,000, and Lax will also be called upon to deliver a public lecture at the Menil Collection in the fall.

The jury this year included Carlos Basualdo (the Keith L. and Katherine Sachs curator of contemporary art at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and curator at MAXXI, Rome), Melissa Chiu (director of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden), and Helen Molesworth (chief curator of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles).

Lax joined the Museum of Modern Art last year as associate curator in the department of media and performance art, following seven years as assistant curator at the Studio Museum in Harlem. There, he curated shows like “When the Stars begin to Fall: Imagination and the American South,” 2014.

A faculty member at the Institute for Curatorial Practice in performance at Wesleyan University’s Center for the Arts, he also serves on the Advisory Committee of the Vera List Center for Arts and Politics, on the Arts Advisory Committee of the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council.