Zigi Ben-Haim

Zigi Ben-Haim is one of the most prominent contemporary artists living in New York. He won numerous distinguished awards including the recent Pollock Krasner Foundation grant, 2013. Ben-Haim has exhibited extensively both in Israel and internationally, and his works are in the collections of the Guggenheim Museum, Brooklyn Museum, the Israel Museum, Jerusalem and Tel-Aviv Museum of Art. On 2005 NASA commissioned Ben-Haim to create a work in tribute to the space shuttle “Columbia”. This year, NASA commissioned an additional monumental work by him in honor of the robotic rover “Curiosity” exploring Mars.

Born in Baghdad, 1945. At the age of five his family fled Baghdad, Iraq, and immigrated to Israel via Iran. Ben-Haim graduated from The Avni Institute of Fine Arts, Tel-Aviv, Israel and the Institute of Fine Arts and the California College of Art in Oakland, California.. He holds an M.A. from the J.F.K. University, Orinda, California, USA and an M.F.A from San Francisco State University, San Francisco, California, USA. He has won numerous awards throughout his career, including: A Pollock Krasner Foundation grant, 2013; 1996; 1990; The Emily Harvey Foundation, Fellowship to Venice, Italy, 2007; DAAD Fellowship to Berlin, Germany, 2004; National Endowment for the Arts, 1985; America-Israel Cultural Foundation, 1966-70.