Steve McQueen’s ‘Commitment to the Human Spirit’ Secures Prestigious Erasmus Prize

Steve Mcqueen b. 1969, United Kingdom Follow +

British filmmaker and artist Steve McQueen has been awarded the prestigious Erasmus Prize, presented annually to a person or institution for contributions to the humanities, social sciences or the arts that express values of “tolerance, cultural pluriformity and non-dogmatic critical thinking”.

The award, consisting of a cash sum of €150,000 (£131,000) and a physical prize in the form of a booklet that unfolds into a ribbon, is given by the Dutch cultural institution The Praemium Erasmianum Foundation, which was founded in 1958 in honour of the 15th century humanist scholar Desiderius Erasmus.

The theme of this year’s prize was Ecce Homo, Behold the Human Being and McQueen was chosen for his “unwavering commitment to the human spirit”, the foundation said in a statement.

“McQueen creates work on themes such as inequality, injustice and resistance, in which he always places humanity—and compassion for that humanity, no matter how bad—at the centre,” added Geertjan de Vugt, director of the Erasmus Prize Foundation. “In doing so, he does not shy away from confronting suffering and pain. In fact, he invites his audience to linger in uneasiness.”

Many eminent thinkers and creatives have been awarded the prize in previous years. Early winners included influential Swedish filmmaker Ingmar Bergman and English sculptor Henry Moore.

Last year’s recipient was the American biologist, philosopher and writer Donna Haraway, and the 2024 winner was the Indian novelist and writer on climate change Amitav Ghosh.

McQueen gained recognition in the 1990s as a visual artist, winning the Turner Prize in 1999, before going on to make feature films, beginning with Hunger in 2008, a film about the 1981 hunger strike in Northern Ireland. 

He went on to win an Oscar for 12 Years a Slave (2013), a film based on the memoir of a man sold into slavery in 19th-century America. He has continued to make striking work in the visual arts, too.

For his 2018–2019 piece Year 3, he commissioned traditional school class photographs of every year three class in London, spanning private and government-funded state, faith and specialist schools. The result offered a snapshot of the capital’s 76,000 seven and eight-year old children.

His latest work, Atlas, currently on show in Tilburg in the Netherlands, uses astronomical data and machine learning models to imagine a journey through space.

“McQueen manages to give universal resonance to the personal and everyday experience, and to make historical events such as the IRA hunger strike or the history of slavery urgent and relatable to a contemporary audience,” de Vugt continued. 

“Through his narratives, he provides us with tools to reflect on our own ethical choices, uncertainties, and judgments about the world around us. Through the insights McQueen offers in this way, his work actively contributes to social change.”