Professor Emerit Chung-Im Kim wins Saidye Bronfman Award

OCAD University congratulates Professor Emerit Chung-Im Kim on being selected as the recipient of the 2026 Saidye Bronfman Award, one of Canada’s most prestigious awards for excellence in fine craft. 

The Saidye Bronfman Award is presented as part of the Governor General’s Awards in Visual and Media Arts, which recognize lifetime achievement and outstanding contributions to Canada’s artistic community. The Canada Council for the Arts announced the 2026 award recipients on September 16, with eight artists selected to receive a $25,000 prize and a bronze medallion. The awards ceremony will take place at Rideau Hall in Ottawa on November 26.

“I am truly honoured to receive this year’s Saidye Bronfman Award. This recognition is the high point of my life and career, and I must give thanks to the Canada Council for the Arts, the Governor General of Canada, and the Bronfman family who’s been supporting fine craft for the last 50 years,” says Kim. “I am also thrilled to be a part of the long awards history, marked by many incredible artists before me. I am excited, humbled, and looking forward to continuing my creative journey.”

An accomplished textile artist, Kim immigrated to Canada in 1990 and taught in OCAD U’s Textile Department for more than two decades before retiring in 2021. A dedicated and inspiring educator, she led innovative collaborative course projects with numerous public institutions, bringing together her interests in nature, science and emerging technologies. Her acclaimed work has been exhibited extensively across Canada and internationally, and she has also contributed to the arts community as a juror and presenter.

“I held many different positions at OCAD U since I first joined OCA (as it was at that time) in 1992. I have many wonderful memories of my fellow faculty members, and of working with young talented students during my teaching career at OCAD U; experiences which have also nurtured and furthered my own practice,” says Kim.

Reflecting on Kim’s artistic practice, Jessica Veevers, an art historian, curator and writer who nominated Kim for the award, says, “Chung-Im Kim’s oeuvre embodies the values most vital to contemporary material practice today: slowness, empathy, respect for material intelligence and an ethics of making that resists automation. Her work is visually compelling and philosophically necessary, reminding us that the handmade still carries the power to think, to feel and to connect.”

The Governor General’s Awards in Visual and Media Arts

An exhibition featuring the work of this year’s award recipients will open at the Beaverbrook Art Gallery in Fredericton, New Brunswick on November 7.

Each year, the Canadian Museum of History acquires either a single work or a series of works by the winner. In addition, Studio Magazine has a long-standing tradition of featuring stories about Saidye Bronfman Award recipients, helping bring greater visibility to their work and achievements.

Learn more about Chung-Im Kim and her work through this artistic video portrait.