The Museum of Arts and Design may have dropped “craft” from its name in 2002, but stewards of the museum never stopped caring about artists who work in craft mediums.

The new $50,000 annual Burke Prize, announced last night at the museum’s annual gala, is intended to strengthen the connection between the Manhattan museum and its origins in 1956 as the Museum of Contemporary Crafts and, beginning in 1979, as the American Craft Museum. “This prize reaffirms our founding mission and continued commitment to artists who work in material processes,” chief curator Shannon Stratton said this morning. Stratton hopes the prize will “remind people of what our roots are; that’s been tough with our name change.”

Of course, the primary goal behind the prize is to open up possibilities for one artist each year with an unrestricted $50,000 boost. Artists under the age of 45 who work in the craft mediums – glass, clay, fiber, wood, and metal – are eligible. Applications will open on the MAD website in February, and an outside jury of four will determine the winner, who’ll be feted at the fall 2018 gala. Artists whose work is interdisciplinary are welcome to apply, Stratton says, pointing out that many younger artists today blend materials or work with painting and technology in addition to craft mediums. “We’re just looking for a deep connection to at least one of those five materials,” she says.

The new prize is endowed by MAD trustee Marian Burke and her husband, Russell. The couple, who split their time between New York, Key West, and Rhode Island, are longtime collectors of glass and jewelry, including works by Dan Dailey, Lino Tagliapietra, Karen Lamonte, and Linda MacNeil. Their endowment, the total of which has not been specified, is enough to fund an annual $50,000 prize for the foreseeable future. “We are so happy to be able to do this for a museum we care about so much,” Marian Burke says. “We hope it inspires a lot of fledgling artists.” Adds Russell Burke: “and focuses attention on the museum.” As a museum, Russell points out, MAD is relatively young.

What does Stratton hope the prize accomplishes? “Big art prizes draw extraordinary attention to the winners,” Stratton says, pointing to the Turner Prize. She hopes the Burke Prize generates visibility for the winner, while “showing people who are paying attention that clay and fiber aren’t the new kids in town,” referring to recent fine-art exhibitions that have “introduced” clay and fiber works with great fanfare. She hopes artists who regularly work with materials the fine-art crowd sometimes overlooks will be acknowledged. “Artists who work in these materials have been marginalized for decades,” she says.

The announcement of the Burke Prize comes as MAD has been without an executive director for the better part of a year. In fact, many people who received the press release foreshadowing Tuesday’s big announcement assumed it would involve a new leader. “That’ll happen soon, too,” Stratton says, laughing. “That’s in the pipeline.”