Overview

• Each artist receives $250,000 from the Pittsburgh-based Heinz Family Foundation, with a formal ceremony scheduled in Pittsburgh in October.
• Philadelphia-born and New York–based, Packer is acclaimed for psychologically charged portraits and still lifes that engage visibility, mourning, and remembrance.
• Watt, an enrolled citizen of the Seneca Nation based in Portland, builds community-centered works across textiles, sculpture, and printmaking, including her well-known Blanket Stories series.
• Foundation chair Teresa Heinz praised Packer for work “infused with beauty and grief” and honored Watt for art that opens pathways to Indigenous traditions and intergenerational connection.
• Watt was reported last week to have been commissioned to collaborate with Nick Cave on a new work for the Obama Presidential Center in Chicago.