Bill T. Jones wins the Wexner Prize

NEW YORK — Choreographer Bill T. Jones has been awarded the 12th Wexner Prize, the Wexner Center for the Arts announced Monday.

The $50,000 prize is given annually “to a major contemporary artist in any artistic field who has been consistently original, influential and challenging to convention,” according to the website of the Ohio-based institution.

Previous winners include director Peter Brook in 1992, painter Gerhard Richter in 1998 and, last year, designer Issey Miyake.

Jones also was scheduled to receive the Harlem Renaissance Award Monday in New York. On July 17, he will be honored with the $35,000 Samuel H. Scripps/American Dance Festival Award.

“It’s an embarrassment of riches. I don’t know where all this is coming from,” Jones said in an interview from Tempe, Ariz., where he is working on his latest dance piece.

“I feel like my mother’s voice begins to loom in the back of my head: ‘When so many good things happen, something bad is going to happen.’ ”

The awards all resonate in different ways, Jones said. But the Wexner Prize is the biggest shock, he said.

“I am really bowled over by that, to know that people outside of my field recognize me.... This is a great, great honor, and an encouragement to continue.”