Overview

• INBAL presented the award on August 20 in the Sala Manuel M. Ponce of the Palacio de Bellas Artes, with family, colleagues, diplomats and former students attending.
• Alejandra de la Paz, INBAL’s director, confirmed that the Museo del Palacio de Bellas Artes will mount the retrospective in the second half of 2026 in the Nacional and Diego Rivera rooms.
• Museum director Daniel Garza Usabiaga said the exhibition seeks a panoramic view of Ota’s production and will gather around one hundred works.
• Ota, born in Nagasaki in 1948 and based in Mexico since 1972, is known for material-driven sculpture in stone, iron, lead and wood and for site-specific projects.
• He taught sculpture for roughly 35 years at UNAM and has prior distinctions including membership in the Academia de Artes de México and Japan’s 2016 Premio del Canciller.