Anonymous Was A Woman Grant Program Announces 2025 Awards
55Nov. 20, 2025
The New York–based organizationAnonymous Was a Woman(AWAW) has announced the fifteen recipients of its 2025awards. The unrestricted $50,000grantsare presented annually to woman-identifying artists over the age of forty who have made outstanding contributions in their respective fields and who continue to make important work. AWAW has distributed more than $8 million in grants to over three hundred artists since its 1996 founding by an anonymous artist, who in 2018 revealed herself to be Susan Unterberg.
The 2025 cohort—whose members were nominated and selected by an anonymous panel of art historians, curators, artists, and writers—range in age from forty-one to eighty-three and work across media including painting, collage, sculpture, installation, performance, photography, film, and video. Among the 2025 grantees are painter Candida Alvarez, known for her kaleidoscopic abstract works; video artist Cecelia Condit, whose work subverts traditional notions of female representation; photographer and activist Lola Flash, a key figure in ACT UP; conceptual artist Park McArthur, who explores themes of access and exclusion in the context of disability; and performance artist Narcissister, whose neo-burlesques upend fixed notions of identity.
“The insights from our inaugural survey and symposium have deepened our understanding of what women artists need to thrive, and reaffirmed the urgency of continuing to provide direct, unrestricted support,” said Unterberg in a statement, referring to AWAW’s 2024 survey of 1,200 woman-identifying artists, produced in collaboration with journalists Charlotte Burns and Julia Halperin, arts leader Loring Randolph, and SMU DataArts, and presented publicly at a New York University symposium this past spring. “I started Anonymous Was A Woman partially in response to the end of federal funding to individual artists. Nearly thirty years later, that same need motivates us to continue our work of uplifting women artists in mid-career.”
A full list of 2025 grantees is below.
Candida AlvarezAmbreen ButtJoAnne CarsonCecelia ConditLola FlashSonya Kelliher-CombsMichelle MarcusePark McArthurNicole MillerNarcissisterDhara RiveraLinda StarkKunié SugiuraHong-An TruongPaula Wilson