In 1979, Jay A. Pritzker, the Hyatt Hotels impresario, and his wife, Cindy, decided to establish an annual prize to bring more awareness of the built environment and to recognize excellence in architecture. In the years since, the award has come to be known as the Nobel of architecture and the profession’s highest honor.
So when the release of the files on Jeffrey Epstein made clear the extent of the contacts between the director of the foundation that awards the prize, Tom Pritzker, and the disgraced financier, some wondered whether the Pritzker Prize would be affected.
Weeks before the prize was about to announce its latest laureate, Mr. Pritzker, who is Jay Pritzker’s son, resigned from his role as executive chairman of the Hyatt Hotels Corporation, saying that he had “exercised terrible judgment in maintaining contact with” Mr. Epstein and his longtime companion Ghislaine Maxwell.
On Monday, the Pritzker Prize defended the integrity of the award in a statement released to The New York Times, saying that the Hyatt Foundation’s role as benefactor allows it “to remain assured in the strength of its process and focus entirely on the celebration of architectural excellence.”
The statement also emphasized the Pritzker jury’s independence: “The jury, composed of internationally respected professionals from a range of disciplines, has always and will continue to conduct its work confidentially and free from external influence.”
A spokeswoman said the announcement of the next laureate, which typically occurs in the first week of March, would be delayed slightly. The prize, which consists of $100,000 as well as a bronze medallion, has been bestowed upon the likes of Frank Gehry and Jean Nouvel and, more recently, Francis Kéré and Liu Jiakun.
The millions of pages of the Epstein files that were released last month showed that Mr. Pritzker and Mr. Epstein frequently corresponded about meals and appointments after Mr. Epstein’s plea deal on sex crimes charges in 2008. In one email about legal representation for an architect, Mr. Pritzker said: “Flexible principles! It’s what I love about lawyers and politicians.”
The files also revealed that Mr. Epstein considered attending the Pritzker ceremony in Beijing in 2012 when the Chinese architect Wang Shu won the prize.
Mr. Pritzker resigned as a Hyatt Hotels Corporation executive but remains director and vice president of the Pritzker Foundation; director and president of the Pritzker Family Philanthropic Fund; and director, chairman and president of the Hyatt Foundation, which established the Pritzker Architecture Prize, the Pritzker spokeswoman said.
The prize, an important imprimatur with the power to anoint “starchitects,” had eluded women until 2004, when Zaha Hadid became the first to win. Five other women have won since, but only in conjunction with others: Kazuyo Sejima (with Ryue Nishizawa); Carme Pigem (with Rafael Aranda and Ramon Vilalta); Yvonne Farrell and Shelley McNamara together; and Anne Lacaton (with Jean-Philippe Vassal).
The architect Denise Scott Brown was denied the prize in 1991 when it was solely awarded to Robert Venturi, her design partner and husband. In 2013, two students at the Harvard Graduate School of Design started a petition to revisit that decision in response to Ms. Scott Brown’s call for “a Pritzker inclusion ceremony” that would recognize “joint creativity.” But the Pritzker jury declined to reconsider the award, saying ”a later jury cannot reopen or second guess the work of an earlier jury, and none has ever done so.”
Mr. Pritzker, whose net worth is estimated at $6.3 billion, is one of 13 Pritzker heirs; his cousins include Gov. JB Pritzker of Illinois and Penny Pritzker, a former commerce secretary.
Thomas Pritzker has been closely connected to the Pritzker Prize. A quote from him is always included in the news release about a new laureate and he is also featured with a quote on the prize’s website.
“As native Chicagoans,” he says, “it’s not surprising that our family was keenly aware of architecture, living in the birthplace of the skyscraper, a city filled with buildings designed by architectural legends such as Louis Sullivan, Frank Lloyd Wright, Mies van der Rohe and many others.”
Robin Pogrebin, who has been a reporter for The Times for 30 years, covers arts and culture.
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