PITTSBURGH.- A provocative visual artist whose installations around the world have woven a broad palette of media into engaging sensory environments has been selected to receive the 14th annual Heinz Award for the Arts and Humanities, among the largest individual achievement prizes in the world.

Ann Hamilton, 52, of Columbus, Ohio, a professor of art at Ohio State University and one of contemporary art’s most influential voices, is among five distinguished Americans selected to receive one of the $250,000 awards, presented by the Heinz Family Foundation.

“Ann Hamilton’s work is truly transformative, both in its visual beauty and the sensory impact it has had on the communities that have helped create and sustain it,” said Teresa Heinz, chairman of the Heinz Family Foundation. “Her installations – labor intensive, participatory and uniquely uncommon in the way in which they innovate and captivate – have mesmerized audiences for more than a quarter century. By blazing new possibilities within the visual arts, she has singularly helped enlarge our collective vocabulary for how we have come to define and appreciate the arts in all its forms. The dynamic force of her art truly embraces the spirit of the arts that so captivated John Heinz during his life, and I am especially pleased to present the 14th annual Heinz Award in the Arts and Humanities to the incomparable Ann Hamilton.”

Noted for a dense accumulation of materials, Ms. Hamilton’s installations create immersive experiences that respond to the architectural presence and social history of their sites. She has forged a reputation as a perceptive, poignant observer whose art explores the places and forms for live, visceral, face-to-face experiences. Influenced by the disciplines of sculpture, photography, textiles, poetry, video and performance, her installations often involve impressive arrangements of materials: a room lined with small canvas dummies, 48,000 blue work shirts layered on a platform, a floor covered in a “skin” of 750,000 copper pennies and honey. Known to utilize sound, found objects and the spoken word, Ms. Hamilton’s environments are sensory explorations of time, language and memory.

A native of Columbus, Ohio, Ms. Hamilton’s earliest interest was in textile design, and later, after earning her Master’s in Fine Arts from Yale University, in sculpture. Over the past 30 years, her works have appeared in exhibitions around the world. One of her first major exhibitions, reciprocal fascinations (1985), featured a central space surrounded by a steel cage perimeter that housed 45 pigeons, surrounding the viewer with the presence of free-flying birds. Installations at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles (capacity of absorption), at the Musée d’art contemporain in Lyon, France (mattering) and at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C. (at hand), solidified her place among the most influential forces within the visual arts. Ms. Hamilton represented the United States at the 48th Venice Biennale, where her piece, myein (the Greek root of the word mystery), responded to the neo-classical architecture of the American pavilion to create a poetic evocation and accounting of America’s social history. Embedded with Braille text, the walls of Ms. Hamilton’s installation featured cascades of bright pink powder that collected on the plaster dots, revealing their presence. In 2002, Ann Hamilton, a comprehensive monograph of Ms. Hamilton’s work was published, followed by Ann Hamilton: An Inventory of Objects in 2006 – both authored by Joan Simon.

Ms. Hamilton has been commissioned to work on several noteworthy projects, including the Seattle Public Library, the San Francisco Public Library and the Allegheny Riverfront Park in Pittsburgh. As a professor of art at Ohio State, she continues to serve as an inspiration and guiding force among a new generation of emerging artists.

“Making is a process of imagining through materializing – of bringing things into relation and moving from what is known toward what is unknown,” Ms. Hamilton said. “We make with what we have at hand – cloth, paper, wood, time, voice, light. What we form from such materials is a means of asking questions. There are many ways to make in the world. Culture isn’t a thing that is found. It is a process and a practice. It is something we make together. All acts of making matter – they amplify – they change the way we see things and they remind us of our power to remake our world. The Heinz Family Foundation honors the possibility of future makings and challenges us all to exercise the attention of our imaginations and attend our questions. I am humbled to receive this honor and grateful for the responsibilities of its permissions.”

Since 1993, the Heinz Family Foundation of Pittsburgh has recognized individuals whose dedication, skill and generosity of spirit represent the best of the human qualities that the late Senator Heinz, for whom the award is named, held so dear.

Presented in five categories, the other Heinz Award recipients are: Environment: Thomas FitzGerald, 53, founder and director of the Kentucky Resources Council, from Louisville, Ky. Human Condition: Brenda Krause Eheart, Ph.D., 64, founder of Generations of Hope, and Hope Meadows, from Champaign, Ill. Public Policy: Robert Greenstein, 62, founder and executive director of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, from Washington, D.C. Technology, the Economy and Employment: Joseph DeRisi, Ph.D., 38, molecular biologist, researcher and inventor, from San Francisco, Calif.