The eight art writers receiving the 2025 Rabkin Prize, which comes with an unrestricted purse of $50,000, have been revealed. The winners in the prize’s ninth cycle are Tempestt Hazel, the co-founder of the Chicago-based art and culture publication Sixty Inches From Center; Jessica Lynne, a writer, critic and former editor at Momus; Nicole Martinez, a critic, journalist, The Art Newspaper contributor and the deputy director of Fountainhead Arts in Miami; Brandy McDonnell, a features writer for The Oklahoman; America Meredith, a writer and the publishing editor for First American Art Magazine who is a member of the Cherokee Nation; Eva Recinos, an art and culture journalist based in Los Angeles; Paul Chaat Smith, a curator and author who is a member of the Comanche Nation; and J Wortham, a staff writer at The New York Times Magazine.
“It is a level of validation that is sorely needed as we are having national conversations about cultural criticism, and how it’s evolving,” Martinez tells The Art Newspaper. “As budgets across the country for arts reporting dwindle, I always wonder how the arts will continue to attract new audiences. By supporting writers directly, the Rabkin Foundation is tackling that problem from a unique angle, and encouraging us to keep going.”
In an interview with the Rabkin Foundation’s executive director Mary Louise Schumacher, McDonnell says: “People ask me sometimes, ‘If you weren’t doing this, who would do it for The Oklahoman?’ I don’t know, I don’t have an answer for you—the answer is possibly no one.”
The Rabkin Prize is awarded by the Dorothea and Leo Rabkin Foundation, which is based in Portland, Maine, and named for the namesake collector and artist couple. The jury for this year’s prizes included the New Yorker staff writer Hua Hsu; the author and editor Joanne McNeil; and Jessica Bell Brown, a curator, writer and art historian who serves as the executive director of the Institute for Contemporary Art at Virginia Commonwealth University.
As it did for the first time last year, the Rabkin Foundation commissioned portraits of and conducted interviews with the winners, which will be released online starting 10 September. With this latest cohort of grantees, the foundation has now awarded almost $4m since launching the prize in 2017.