The unrestricted grant program Anonymous Was A Woman announced today the ten recipients of its 2018 grants, which recognize women artists who are over forty years old and have made significant contributions to their fields. The initiative will award a total of $250,000 and will give each artist $25,000.
Ranging from forty-two to eighty years of age and working in the media of painting, installation, performance, photography, and film, the awardees include Dotty Attie, María Magdalena Campos-Pons, Patty Chang, Beverly Fishman, Kate Gilmore, Heather Hart, Deborah Roberts, Rocío Rodríguez, Michèle Stephenson, and Betty Tompkins.
The New York–based artist Susan Unterberg founded Anonymous Was a Woman in 1996, when the National Endowment for the Arts eliminated grants for individual artists, and decided to keep her patronage a secret. Named after a line from Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own, the initiative was also established to help advance mid-career women artists.
After more than two decades of anonymity, Unterberg revealed her identity as the founder of the grant program in July 2018. “I am delighted to, for the first time, personally and publicly congratulate this year’s award recipients,” Unterberg said in a statement. “I founded Anonymous Was a Woman to fill a void that I witnessed myself: support for women artists in the middle stages of their careers. I am thrilled to continue this mission by recognizing this year’s group of remarkable women at a moment that there is heightened discussion about the vitality of women’s voices.”
To date, the program has awarded over $5.8 million in grants to 230 women artists.
