On May 18, 2023, an artist’s life changed overnight. The Bennett Prize’s “Rising Voices 3” touring exhibition opened and named Shiqing Deng, of Brooklyn, New York, the winner of the prestigious 2023 Bennett Prize. She was awarded $50,000, giving her the opportunity to create new work in a figurative realist style for a solo show that will travel the country.
The biennial Bennett Prize is granted exclusively to women painters, addressing a stark institutional disparity in the field. Per the terms set by the Prize’s co-founders, husband-and-wife art collectors Steven Alan Bennett and Dr. Elaine Melotti Schmidt, any woman artist who paints in a figurative realist style and is pursuing a career as an artist is eligible to apply.