By arts editor HELEN MUSA

Canberra glass artist Akie Haga has won the 2026 People’s Choice Award in the Waterhouse Natural Science Art Prize, with visitors to the long running national science and art prize at the South Australian Museum voting overwhelmingly for her luminous glass sculpture, Soft Echo.

Concluding its run on July 19, the $5,000 award attracted more than 2,000 public votes across 74 finalists, with Haga’s work receiving more than 10 per cent of the total.

The piece was also a finalist in the Open category and sold for $7,500 shortly after the exhibition opened in Adelaide in April.

It had previously been announced that Adelaide ceramicist Deb McKay had won the $30,000 Open category for The Ghosts of our Coastal Water, while Victorian artist Kat Parker won the $10,000 Emerging Artist category for Discarded (Christmas Island Pipistrelle).

Haga, who is based at Canberra Glassworks, says she created Soft Echo as a delicate glass crown inspired by the Australian flannel flower. Hand formed in flameworked borosilicate glass, the sculpture combines translucent blossoms and branching forms in a work that reflects on memory, belonging and renewal.

For the Japanese-born artist, who completed an Honours degree in the Glass Workshop at the Australian National University in 2004, the work connects memories of weaving clover crowns as a child in Japan with the resilience of the native flannel flower, a species known to return after bushfires.

“The work mirrors the nature of memory itself, fragile, luminous and resilient through change,” Haga said.

South Australian Museum director Samantha Hamilton said the award demonstrated the strong connection audiences had made with Haga’s work.

Although in past years works from the Waterhouse Prize have toured to the National Archives of Australia in Canberra, the South Australian Museum has confirmed that works from the 2026 competition will not embark on a national tour.

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