After Deliberation by First All-Women Jury, Winner of Bennett Prize Announced

The Bennett Prize, the largest art award offered to women working in the field of figurative painting, announced its winning artist today in an exhibition unveiled at the Muskegon Museum of Art, in western Michigan.

Dallas-based Amy Werntz — also a finalist for the second Bennett Prize in 2021— took home the top honor, joining previous winners Ayana Ross, Shiqing Deng, and Aneka Ingold. Her strikingly lifelike paintings depict elderly people, mostly women, in everyday scenarios: eating at a diner, shopping, sitting at a café, or bundled against the elements.

“You’re brought into an intimate moment with them… I feel that it validates the elderly,” says Dr. Elaine Melotti Schmidt, an art collector who co-founded The Bennett Prize along with her husband, Steven Alan Bennett.

For the first time in The Prize’s history, the winner was determined by an all-female jury.  Schmidt was joined by Margaret Bowland, painter and faculty member at the New York Academy of Art; Angela Fraleigh, painter and professor at Moravian University in Bethlehem, Penn.; and Gloria Groom, Winton Green curator of 19th-century European painting and sculpture at the Art Institute of Chicago.

The jury was also struck by Werntz’s personal statement, in which she wrote that she intended to use the prize money to fund a new painting series which shifts the viewer’s perspective from that of an interlocutor to an observer.

“Certainly, people can do whatever they want with the money. But she had thought about how her painting style would evolve,” Schmidt says.

The Prize entails $50,000 and a solo show that will travel in conjunction with work from all the finalists for the fifth Bennett Prize, slated for 2027. Likewise, Deng, the winner of the previous Bennett Prize, will have her work shown alongside this year’s 10 finalists in a traveling exhibition. After showing at the Muskegon Museum of Art from May 15 to Aug. 24, the exhibition will travel to the Arnot Art Museum (Elmira, New York), the Customs House Museum and Cultural Center (Clarksville, Tenn.), the Bo Bartlett Center (Columbus, Ga.) and Studio Incamminati (Philadelphia).

Nicole Santiago, of Williamsburg, Va., won $10,000 as the runner-up. The judges were impressed by the dense environments that make up her work — figures in dimly lit spaces crowded by things, like party decorations, dirty laundry, bottles and cans, and iPads and iPhones.

“I’m always looking at the construction of a painting — I’m thinking about the compositional structure, how it holds together, or doesn’t,” Fraleigh says. “I always talk to my students about how you have to fully cook the cake before you put the icing on it.”

Pedagogy in general is important to this year’s Bennett Prize panel. Fraleigh and Bowland both teach art students; Schmidt is a retired teacher. All three agree that, in 2025, it’s not enough to learn to paint — artists must aggressively promote themselves in a capricious and trend-obsessed market. That’s historically been harder for women.

“I’d hoped so much that, by the time my students came along, all the things that happened to me weren’t there. And I have found that not to be true at all. My female students will stand back and don’t believe they’re the most important person in the room. My male students do,” Bowland says. “So, God bless the Bennetts. I mean, there are very few people who have the power to move that needle.”

Bowland’s paintings were some of the first to become part of what is now The Bennett Art Collection of Figurative Realists, focusing, like the competition, on female figurative artists. Fraleigh’s work is also represented in The Collection after the artist sent Schmidt and her husband a catalog in the mail, out of the blue. The Bennetts were not just impressed by Fraleigh’s work but by her initiative and gumption.

“In our case, that was very effective,” she recalls.

To address the challenges of self-promotion and navigating a brutal market, all 10 Bennett finalists attend four group sessions with a professional coach to address the ins and outs of the art market. As part of the first-place prize, the winner is also provided with private consultation from the coach, should they desire it.

As an added bonus, because of the nature of The Prize, the Bennett finalists also have a built-in network of peer artists to consult and commiserate with. Schmidt has heard that “little subgroups” of finalists tend to keep in touch.

“The Prize is supposed to be formative, not just, ‘Here’s money; good luck.’ We’re trying to help people develop their careers,” Schmidt says.

In 2018, Schmidt and Bennett endowed The Bennett Prize at the Pittsburgh Foundation with $3 million. The first Bennett Prize competition occurred the following year. Held every other year, the competition seeks to boost the careers of women painters who have not yet achieved full professional recognition. In total, the Prize’s finalists and three winners so far have won 19 additional awards and been featured in over 50 national publications. Many have become represented by galleries, participated in residencies, and sold pieces to museums and other permanent collections.

After Thursday’s announcement, Werntz’s work, as well as that of her fellow finalists, will be displayed in the Muskegon Museum of Art’s new Bennett Schmidt Pavilion. The pavilion, which opened in February, doubles the museum’s footprint and carries a commitment to showing the works of female artists across mediums. The pavilion is currently showing more than 60 pieces from The Bennett Collection; ultimately, the museum will become the permanent steward of some 150 paintings from The Collection.

Through The Prize and the new pavilion, Schmidt and Bennett’s influence will continue to ripple across generations of women artists. It certainly altered the course of Bowland’s own career.

“Having the Bennetts champion my work was one of the largest facts of my life. After they did, many other people came on board,” Bowland says. “The fact that they stayed by me through thick and thin has meant everything to me.”

For full details on how to apply for The Bennett Prize, please visit: thebennettprize.org.