Xaviera Simmons, a 2006-2007 LMCC Workspace resident artist, has been awarded the Driskell Prize!

From artnet magazine:

Brooklyn-based artist Xaviera Simmons (b. 1974) has won the 2008 David C. Driskell Prize, awarded by the High Museum of Art in Atlanta. The Driskell honors "a scholar or artist in the beginning or middle of his or her career whose work makes an original and important contribution to the field of African American art or art history," and comes with a purse of $25,000. Simmons is best known for a 2006 installation at Art in General in New York, for which she transformed the space into a salon with felted floors, a DJ booth and impromptu jazz performances (the piece, called "How to Break Your Own Heart: Visitors Welcome," traveled to the Contemporary Arts Museum in Houston and the Zacheta National Art Gallery in Warsaw.) Past winners of the Driskell, which was established in 2005, are scholar Kellie Jones (2005), artist Willie Cole (2006) and scholar and curator Franklin Sirmans (2007).