RABKIN
PRIZE
The Rabkin Prize celebrates the creative and intellectual contributions of today’s visual arts writers and comes with an unrestricted award of $50,000. Arts writers from across the U.S. are identified via a nomination process and an independent jury selects the winners.
We believe today’s arts writers are at the heart of our most essential conversations, help us think together in public, create original field research for art history, and bear witness to the essential value of what artists do.
“I am a full-time, freelance art critic. As such, the awards I've received, the Andy Warhol Arts Writers Grant and the Rabkin Prize, were lifesavers, allowing me to remain financially afloat in a difficult, and frankly, increasingly unsustainable media landscape.”
– Aruna D’Souza, 2021 Rabkin Prize winner
“The prize helped stabilize me financially and allowed me to complete construction on a home office — which means I no longer have to write on the dining room table.”
– Carolina Miranda, 2017 prize winner
“The award was massively vindicating. It evened out my historic underpayment.”
– Lori Waxman, 2018 prize winner
"The Rabkin Prize was life changing. It provided me with a new relationship to time. I was able to forgo taking on freelance work to pay the bills. Instead, I was able to develop a daily writing and rigorous reading practice. The Rabkin prize empowered me to call myself a writer, because I was able to fully dedicate uninterrupted time to a consistent writing practice."
– Taylor Aldridge, 2019 prize winner
“This is going to help me continue to do the work for some period of time.”
– Siddhartha Mitter, 2024 Rabkin Prize winner
“I put 80% of it in an investment account and spent the rest on dental work and a fancy new mattress. Not exciting, perhaps, but made me feel like a proper adult.”
– Shana Nys Dambrot, 2022 prize winner