LA’s MOCA Announces New $100,000 ‘Environment and Art’ Prize

The Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles will soon award three editions of a major artist prize over the next six years.

Called the Eric and Wendy Schmidt Environment and Art Prize, the award, which comes with $100,000, will go to an artist whose practice “address[es] critical intersections in art, architecture, design, climate, conservation, sustainability, and environmental justice,” according to a release.

“Eric and Wendy Schmidt, through their philanthropic initiatives, have long supported projects at the intersection of science, technology, and the arts. MOCA is immensely grateful to them for their generous gift to establish this prize,” MOCA’s director Johanna Burton said in a statement. “This new prize enables the museum to continue to forefront the work of artists who are creating dialogue and visibility around issues of climate, conservation, and sustainability.”

Eric previously served as the CEO and then executive chairman of Google, and later executive chairman of Alphabet. Wendy serves as president of both the Schmidt Family Foundation and the Schmidt Ocean Institute.

The inaugural winner of the prize will be announced this fall. The winner will work over the next year and a half to realize a new commissioned work that will be unveiled at MOCA in spring 2026. Each winner will be selected a five-person jury, drawn from a list of nominees selected by a group of 15 to 20 specialists in art and architecture, conservation and ecology, and more. Each nominee will then develop a proposal for the final work.  

This year’s jury is composed of Burton; John Kenneth Paranada, curator of art and climate change at the Sainsbury Center; Carson Chan, a curator at the Museum of Modern Art and director of its Institute for the Joint Study of the Built and the Natural Environment; Maria Seferian, chair of MOCA’s board; and Dan Hammer, an advisor to the MOCA Environmental Council.

The prize is endowed by the Schmidts, who are collectors and patrons, through 2030. Together, the couple founded a family foundation in 2006 that has a wide philanthropic scope, from working to provide clean renewable energy and healthy oceans to the protections of human rights. They also established the Schmidt Ocean Institute, which provides scientists access to a research vessel in exchange for making their findings publicly available.

“Science and technology help us explain the world, while art and community give us understanding and belonging,” Wendy Schmidt said in a statement. “We are delighted to establish this prize with MOCA because, as we’ve seen across our philanthropy, connecting scientists, artists and communities appears to reveal essential truths about people and our planet.”