Thank you to ArtNews for featuring news of The Bennett Prize 4.0 Call for Entries which is now open! The announcement is shared as part of a feature of The Bennett Prize 2.0 winner, Ayana Ross.
Read an excerpt here:
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When Ayana Ross heard that the Bennett Prize had opened its call for submissions, back in 2020, she almost didn’t apply.
“I certainly didn’t see myself at that time as being suited for it,” she admits, calling from her home studio in McDonough, Ga. “But over a series of months, whenever I would talk on the phone with a friend from undergrad, she would remind me: ‘Okay, have you applied?’”
Good thing she did. Out of ten talented finalists selected from nearly 700 applicants, Ross walked away with the $50,000 prize, the largest of its kind offered solely to women figurative painters. (Her win was preceded by Aneka Ingold’s, who received the inaugural Bennett Prize in 2019, and succeeded by Shiqing Deng’s, who won the third Bennett Prize in 2023.) The prize also includes a touring solo exhibition, which Ross titled “The Lessons I Leave You”; still making its way across the country after opening last May, the show is currently on view at the Customs House Museum in Clarksville, Tenn.
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