The Rabkin Prize is a prestigious award that celebrates writers who contribute significantly to the art community by engaging in essential conversations, conducting original field research in art history, and showcasing the value of artists’ work. The 2024 Rabkin Prize winners include Greg Allen, Holland Cotter, Robin Givhan, Thomas Lawson, Siddhartha Mitter, Cassie Packard, TK Smith, and Emily Watlington.
This year, the Rabkin Foundation took a unique approach to humanize the prize winners by commissioning portraits of them in their workspaces and conducting interviews about their lives and ideas. The project, known as the Rabkin Interviews, will be launched in September and will be available on various platforms such as Substack, social media, the foundation’s website, and podcasting platforms.
Established in 2017, the Rabkin Prize has awarded a total of $3.5 million over eight cycles. Nominators from the visual arts community across the country provide a list of potential winners, who then submit recent work samples and a resume for consideration. An independent jury, which included Dennis Lim, rashid shabazz, and Alexandra Grant, selects the winners. Writers can be renominated and remain eligible until they win the prize.
The Rabkin Prize is the flagship program of the Dorothea and Leo Rabkin Foundation, an artist-endowed foundation based in Portland, Maine. Leo Rabkin, an artist who exhibited in New York, and his wife, Dorothea, valued art discourse and built a notable collection of folk and outsider art. The foundation’s headquarters houses a gallery where visitors can explore Leo Rabkin’s work.
To learn more about the foundation and the Rabkin Prize, visit rabkinfoundation.org.
