Queen Sonja Lifetime Achievement Award for Kentridge
- Wits Alumni Relations
Alumnus’s career celebrated for significant contribution to graphic art and printmaking.
Wits alumnus Dr William Kentridge (BA 1977, DLitt honoris causa 2004) was awarded The Queen Sonja Lifetime Achievement Award, one of the world’s most important prizes for printmaking.
The announcement was made by the Queen Sonja Art Foundation on 3 June 2022. 
He will be presented with the award by Her Majesty Queen Sonja of Norway at an award ceremony at the new Munch Museum in Oslo on 20 June 2022. The award celebrates an artist’s career and lifetime contribution to graphic art and printmaking. It is the QSPA Board that decides on the artists who receive this honour.
The HM Queen Sonja Art Foundation was established in 2011 to generate interest in and promote the development of graphic art. The Foundation presents three awards every other year. In 2018 the QSPA Lifetime Achievement Award was presented for the first time and is presented biannually. Previous recipients include David Hockney (2018) and Paula Rego (2020).
“It is a great honour for the QSPA board to present William Kentridge with the Lifetime Achievement Award for his distinguished contribution to the art of printmaking through a long and outstanding career,” the statement from the foundation said.
Dr Kentridge’s career has brought him international recognition at a comparatively early age as one of the major living artists. He has strong Witsie roots: His mother, Felicia (LLB 1953), helped establish the first Legal Resource Centre in South Africa. His father, the eminent Sir Sydney Kentridge QC, defended Nelson Mandela in the Treason Trial and represented the Biko family in the inquest into Steve Biko’s death. Johannesburg has acted as an inspirational muse for many of his works and he was awarded an honorary doctorate from Wits in 2004.
A derivation of Oh To Believe in Another World will be at The Goodman Gallery, London, concurrent to his major survey at The Royal Academy of the Arts, in September till December 2022.