From November 5, 2021, to January 9, 2022, Museum JAN will be exhibiting new works by the three artists nominated for the Bernardine de Neeve Award 2021. The three nominees are Jenny Ritzenhoff, Judith Roux, and Nataliya Vladychko. The Bernardine de Neeve Award is named after Bernardine de Neeve (1915-1996), the first chief curator of decorative arts at Museum Boijmans van Beuningen in Rotterdam and responsible for the museum's collection policy. She had a particular fondness for glass art and was co-founder of the 'Friends of Modern Glass' association. In tribute to Bernardine de Neeve, this association established the Bernardine de Neeve Award in 1990 to promote the artistic development of glass artists from the Netherlands and Belgium.

This year, the prize will once again be awarded to an artist with an innovative and surprising approach to glass, who expresses this artistically. Glass is a visual material that logically forms an essential part of the artist's entire oeuvre. The jury also pays attention to the diversity of expression and techniques, as well as innovative working methods. The award ceremony will take place on November 21 at Museum JAN.

Jenny Ritzenhoff (1973) grew up in Germany and studied architecture and urban planning. She ultimately chose art and graduated in 2013 from the Glass department of the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam.

Ritzenhoff is fascinated by glass and has explored various processing techniques, including glassblowing and pâte de verre (glass paste). She first creates models from other materials, which she then translates into glass, playing with form, light, and color. She states that her work "explores the influence of the past on the present, lasting and disappearing, emerging and fading."

Judith Roux (1992) graduated from the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in 2018 and is now interim coordinator of the academy's renowned glass department.

Roux mainly uses the so-called burner technique, in which she melts transparent glass rods together in a staircase-like shape using a small burner. This results in a fragile, poetic structure that can represent a landscape or buildings in simplified forms. Despite its minimalist visual language, Roux's work is capable of filling a space in a monumental way. Light and transparency play an important role in this.

Nataliya Vladychko (1977) graduated from the art academy in Lviv (Ukraine) in 1997, where she became fascinated by glass as a material. She created her graduation project in stained glass and later specialized in various techniques, such as fusing, which she has mastered to perfection.

Her artworks are interpretations of nature. She studies the germinating plant on the basis of drawings. In glass, however, each model is given its own identity through interesting color combinations and different movements. Thanks to her personal input, these are not models of nature, but a product of the imagination and a metaphor for growth and development.

The Bernardine de Neeve Prize is an incentive award for contemporary glass art, established by the Association of Friends of Modern Glass. On November 21, the winner of this prestigious prize was announced at Museum JAN: Judith Roux!