2024/2025 Award Cycle - The Bennett Prize (Due Oct. 4)
2024/2025 Award Cycle - The Bennett Prize
Deadline: October 4th, 2024
THE BENNETT PRIZE, created in 2018, awards $50,000 to a woman artist to create her own solo exhibition of figurative realist paintings, which then travels the country. The Prize propels the careers of women painters who have not yet realized full professional recognition, empowering new artists and those who have painted for many years. The Prize expands opportunities for the public, who may not be familiar with figurative realist painting, to learn more about the creative vision of talented women painters in this increasingly popular genre. In 2018, the inaugural year of The Prize, there were 647 entries. In 2020 and 2022, the number of entries continues to grow.
SINCE 2010, STEVEN ALAN BENNETT AND DR. ELAINE MELOTTI SCHMIDT have been collecting paintings by contemporary women artists who work in the figurative realistic style; that is realistic paintings, often stunningly so, of people. It’s an approach that the couple embrace for authentically depicting and celebrating women in all their complexity, power and vulnerability. As the couple’s collection has grown, so has their awareness of inequities that confront women in the arts.