The Pocantico Prize for Visual Artists pairs a $25,000 cash prize with a two-month artist residency at the David Rockefeller Creative Arts Center (DR Center) at Pocantico. In alternating years, the Prize will be awarded to a visual artist working in the Hudson Valley and one chosen from a national pool. Pocantico Prize awardees are nominated by select arts organizations and leaders in the field. Nominations will be based on the artist’s experiences, qualifications, trajectory of artistic excellence, and potential for further growth and societal impact. Nominators are encouraged to consider nominating artists as described above who identify as Black, Indigenous, or people of color; disabled; women, queer, or gender non-binary, or as belonging to another group that has been historically disadvantaged, or denied opportunities or recognition. Past nominators include El Museo del Barrio, MoMA PS1, Studio Museum of Harlem, Wave Hill, the Katonah Museum, and Arts Westchester). Winners are chosen by a jury of RBF staff and outside experts.

The Pocantico Prize is funded by the RBF Culpeper Arts and Culture program, which supports the creative process through grants to arts organizations in the Fund’s home city of New York. Since 2012, the program has funded performing arts residencies for grantees at The Pocantico Center. The new artists’ studio in the DR Center at Pocantico will expand the residency program to directly support visual artists for the first time.

The DR Center will also provide increasing opportunities for engagement with neighbors in the Hudson Valley. In addition to the new prize for individual artists, the RBF will offer an annual grant to a local community-based arts group working with underserved communities. The grant allows the selected organization to use the DR Center artists’ studio as a satellite location to conduct programs, workshops, exhibitions, performances, and other artistic initiatives for up to six months.

Artists-In-Residence

The LOFT LGBTQ+ Community Center

Fall 2024

The LOFT LGBTQ+ Community Center is a nonprofit serving the LGBTQ+ community in Westchester County and the Lower Hudson Valley. Its mission is to further the cause of inclusion, diversity, and pride through education, advocacy, and celebration. The LOFT provides a range of services including support groups, social activities, and events like Westchester Pride and the Hudson Valley TransForum. It also runs The Trans Support of The Hudson Valley (TSHV) to empower transgender, gender nonconforming, and nonbinary communities.

Chie Fueki

Spring 2024

Born in Japan, and raised in Brazil, artist Chie Fueki lives and works in Beacon, NY. Fueki’s work embraces the visual language of these three distinct cultures. Her paintings depict contemporary life in spectacular motion, featuring cryptic imagery ranging from American pop culture to traditional Japanese motifs. Through an intricate process of painting, drawing, cutting, and collaging, sometimes enriched with glitter and graphite rubbings, her dizzying-yet-harmonious compositions fuse jewel-like tones and dynamic patterns.

Blue Door Art Center

Fall 2023

The Blue Door Art Center has brought the arts to Westchester communities for over 22 years through affordable performances and educational programming for art lovers of all ages and abilities. Yonkers’ first community arts organization hosts low-cost Open Mic nights, workshops, and other special programming that have played a critical role in developing emerging artists regardless of their financial situation.

Amaryllis R. Flowers

Spring 2023

Amaryllis R. Flowers is a Queer Puerto Rican American artist living and working in Brooklyn, NY. Raised between multiple cities and rural communities across America in a constantly shifting landscape, her practice explores themes of hybridity, mythology, and sexuality. Utilizing drawings, video, sculpture, performance and installation, her work is a visual language paying attention to the spaces in-between categories and revering those that know the trouble and pleasure there.

Arts 10566

Winter 2022

Arts 10566, Inc. engages Peekskill's community through the arts, with a focus on the youth, young adults, and families identifying as Black, Latinx, and Indigenous. The community organization is dedicated to addressing systemic inequalities in arts education through its free visual art, music, dance, and spoken word workshops, which provide underserved students with the opportunity giving students to cultivate and showcase their artistic talents.

Athena LaTocha

Fall 2022

Born in Anchorage, Alaska, Athena LaTocha is an artist whose massive works on paper explore the relationship between human-made and natural worlds. The artist incorporates materials such as ink, lead, earth, and wood while looking at mark making and displacement of materials by industrial equipment and natural events. LaTocha’s process is about being immersed in her environments and responding to the storied and, at times, traumatic cultural histories that are rooted in place.