The once-secretive Anonymous Was a Woman program has named the 10 winners of its 2018 grants, which recognize women artists over the age of 40. Each winner receives $25,000.
Started in 1996 as a response to the National Endowment for the Arts’s decision to stop funding individual artists, the grants had long been awarded by a donor who chose to remain anonymous. But earlier this year, the New York–based artist Susan Unterberg revealed herself as the funder in an article in the New York Times. Winners of the awards, now in their 23rd edition, are selected by a group of female art historians, curators, writers, and past winners.
In an interview, Unterberg said the awards highlight artists who have established themselves in the field. “They have to have a substantial body of work,” Unterberg told ARTnews. “They’re not novices.”
Among this year’s winners are Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons, who is organizing the forthcoming 2019 edition of the Havana Biennial, and Patty Chang, whose video The Wandering Lake, which has previously been shown at the 2016 Shanghai Biennale and the Queens Museum in New York, will be exhibited next year at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles.
The full list of 2018 Anonymous Was a Woman grantees follows below.
Dotty Attie
Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons
Patty Chang
Beverly Fishman
Kate Gilmore
Heather Hart
Deborah Roberts
Rocío Rodríguez
Michèle Stephenson
Betty Tompkins
