Six Visual Artists Win This Year’s Coveted Rome Prize, Including Tony Cokes and Elle Pérez

The American Academy in Rome has recently announced the winners of the 2022-2023 Rome Prize and Italian Scholarships.

This year’s winners among visual artists are

• Tony Cokes;
• Todd Gray;
• Esther Partegas;
• El Perez;
• Ioana M. Urikaru;
• and Bradford M. Young.

The Fine Arts Prize for the Italian Research Fellow of the Fondazione Sviluppo e Crescita CRT in the field of fine arts was awarded to Alisa Visentin. The prestigious Rome Prize is awarded annually to approximately 30 American scientists and artists, from medievalists to landscape architects.

Each winner of Rome Prize receives housing, meals, a studio and a stipend. Previously selected artists include Sarah Oppenheimer, Nari Ward, Jennifer Packer, Mel Bochner and more.

Cokes is also a professor at Brown University. He is perhaps the most established artist of all. His text video work has been exhibited at institutions such as The Shed and the Museum of Modern Art and is currently included in the 2022 Whitney Biennale.

Partegas mainly works with sculpture, Perez is a photographer whose star has been on the rise in the last few years, and Gray is known for his work combining photography and sculpture.

Urikaru and Yang are both film directors. Young was the cinematographer on Selma (2014), The Most Violent Year (2014) and Arrival (2016), for which he won an Oscar.

This year, awards were also given in the fields of literature, music studies, design, architecture, preservation and conservation of historical monuments, medieval studies and other areas. According to the post, 46 percent of the winners identify as people of color, and 23 percent of the winners were born outside the United States.

Academy President and CEO Mark Robbins said in a statement that this year’s Prize of Rome winners and Italian Fellows represent the diversity of the United States. He added that their projects build on the Academy’s commitment to the global impact of the arts and humanities. These scholarships are transformative and we look forward to seeing how this experience translates into reality.