Born in 1961 in Massachusetts, lives and works in Beach Lake, PA. Č l‘americano Mark Dion il vincitore, a Washington, dell‘ottava edizione del Lucelia Artist Award, riconoscimento assegnato dallo Smithsonian American Art Museum. Dotato di 25mila dollari, il premio ha l‘obbiettivo di incoraggiare lo sviluppo e le ricerche sperimentali negli artisti. L‘artista č noto per le sue installazioni che sfruttano diversi media, sculture e progetti pubblici che mescolano arte, scienza e storia. La giuria che ha segnalato Dion era composta da Mark Bessire, direttore del Bates College Museum of Art, Allan McCollum, artista e senior critic in sculpture alla Yale University School of Art, Nancy Princenthal, senior editor per Art in America, John Ravenal, curatore di modern and contemporary art al Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Heidi Zuckerman Jacobson, direttore e chief curator all‘Aspen Art Museum. Since the mid-1980‘s Dion has been investigating the relationship between the natural world and its forms of representation and classification. Acting at times as explorer, biologist, ornithologist, ethnographer or archaeologist, Dion constructs laboratories and experiments in his installations, creating personal systems of classification. The results mimic, as a contemporary critique, the scientific processes characteritic of the recent historical past. Fictional elements in his work often function ironically, pointing toward outmoded scientific theories and techniques, to reveal the subjective, and at times arbitrary, character of scientific research. Mark Dion shows his work in galleries and museums all over the world, and is included in importanti public and private collections: PS1, New York; Museo Nacional Reina Sofia, Madrid (1994); GAM, Turin (1996); XLVII Venice Biennial; Sculpture Projects, Munster (1997); Kunstverein, Hamburg; De Appel, Amsterdam (1997); Tate Modern, London; MOMA, New York (1999); Whitney Museum, New York (2001); Aldrich Museum, Ridgefield CT (2003); The Manchester Museum, Manchester, UK (2005); MoMA, New York (2006); Carré d’art contemporain, Nimes; Natural History Museum, London; MARCO, Vigo, Spain; (2007); Proyecto Arte Contemporáneo Murcia 2008 (curated by N. Bourriaud); Kunstraum Dornbirn, Austria (2008).