Eight Arts Writers Awarded 2025 Rabkin Prize
199Sept. 10, 2025
The Dorothea and LeoRabkin Foundationon September 4 announced the eight recipients of its 2025Rabkin Prizefor arts journalists. Each will receive an unrestricted grant of $50,000.
Inaugurated in 2017, the honor recognizes the contributions of journalists writing about the visual arts for a general audience and has to date awarded $4 million.
This year’s cohort comprises Tempestt Hazel, cofounder of Sixty Inches from Center, a Chicago literary platform celebrating Black and Indigenous voices; writer and critic Jessica Lynne, a cofounder of the journal ARTS.BLACK; critic Nicole Martinez, deputy director of the Miami-based Fountainhead Arts; Brandy McDonnell, features writer for The Oklahoman; writer America Meredith (Cherokee Nation), publishing editor of First American Art Magazine; arts and culture journalist Eva Recinos; author, essayist, and curator Paul Chaat Smith (Comanche Nation); and New York Times Magazine staff writer J Wortham. Related Teiger Foundation Awards $7 Million in Grants to 85 Curators Anonymous Was a Woman Awards Over $500,000 in Environmental Grants
The 2025 judging panel was composed of New Yorker staff writer Hua Hsu, author of the Pulitzer Prize–winning Stay True: A Memoir, and publisher of the zine Suspended in Time; writer and editor Joanne McNeil, author of the novel Wrong Way and of Lurking: How a Person Became a User, a book examining online platforms; and curator, writer, and art historian Jessica Bell Brown, executive director of the Institute for Contemporary Art at Virginia Commonwealth University.
This year, for the second year running, the Rabkin Foundation commissioned portraits of each of the grantees, who were photographed by Kevin J. Miyazaki in their respective work settings. The foundation has said that its goal is to “humanize the often invisible labors of today’s arts writers.” Interviews with all eight winners, conducted by the foundation’s executive director, Mary Louise Schumacher, will be available on the organization’s website, podcast, and Substack.