2026 VMFA Aaron Siskind Award for Photography

About the Call

The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts is happy to sponsor the VMFA Aaron Siskind Award for excellence in modern images.

VMFA is proud to rejoice Aaron Siskind’s inventive legacy, assist the apply of images as an important technique of inventive expression, and honor the function that the Aaron Siskind Foundation performed in supporting photographers via the Individual Photographer’s Fellowship.

We invite entries from artists working with nonetheless photo-based media.

This award is meant to assist early- to mid-career artists in addition to established photographers who’ve demonstrated a sustained dedication to their apply however who might not but have acquired vital vital recognition.

This materials assist is supposed to allow photographers to finish a significant physique of work-whether the continuation or finalization of a photographic sequence; the event of an exhibition, monograph or guide venture; or one other main inventive endeavor.

What Winners Receive

Two artists will every obtain an unrestricted prize of $25,000.

About the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts

The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond, Virginia, is among the largest complete artwork museums within the United States. VMFA, which opened in 1936, is a state company and privately endowed instructional establishment. Its function is to gather, protect, exhibit and interpret artwork, and to encourage the research of the humanities. Through the Office of Statewide Partnerships Program, the museum provides curated exhibitions, arts-related audiovisual applications, symposia, lectures, conferences, and workshops by visible and performing artists. In addition to presenting a wide selection of particular exhibitions, the museum supplies guests with the chance to expertise a worldwide assortment of artwork that spans greater than 6,000 years. VMFA’s everlasting holdings embody greater than 50,000 artworks. In May 2010, VMFA opened the James W. and Frances G. McGlothlin Wing I after a transformative enlargement, beforehand the most important in its historical past. A brand new enlargement, the McGlothlin Wing II, is deliberate to open in 2029. Comprising greater than 170,000 sq. toes, will probably be the most important enlargement within the museum’s historical past and can make VMFA the fourth largest complete artwork museum within the United States. As a part of this enlargement, the museum is developing a collection of devoted images galleries and constructing a 12,500 sq. foot middle for the research, care, and conservation of pictures and works on paper.

About the Aaron Siskind Collection at VMFA

In 2020, VMFA acquired a rare present of greater than 8,000 pictures by Aaron Siskind from the Aaron Siskind Foundation in New York. Established by the artist in 1984, the muse’s mission was to protect and defend Siskind’s inventive legacy, in addition to to foster data and appreciation for images via analysis, publications, exhibitions and an annual fellowship prize for particular person photographers. When the muse dissolved its operations in 2020, it sought to switch the gathering to an American artwork museum that may be keen to manage the annual fellowship prize and look after, interpret and show the muse’s core assortment of Siskind’s pictures. VMFA was awarded this main present because of the museum’s demonstrated dedication to images and its excellent fellowship program.

How to Enter

The VMFA Aaron Siskind Award for Photography is open to U.S. residents and lawful everlasting residents (should be a holder of a sound U.S. Permanent Resident Card) who’re at the very least 18 years of age and for whom images is a major vocation.

Applicants are required to supply:

1. Basic profile info: identify, contact information, and so on.
2. CV overlaying the applicant’s skilled background together with coaching, exhibitions, awards, and publications. Applicants might add a PDF (really helpful) or sort as much as 2000 characters within the textual content discipline offered within the software.
3. Artist Statement describing the applicant’s inventive apply and detailing the venture, sequence, or physique of labor the award will assist. Please restrict to 500 phrases or much less. This needs to be typed immediately into the Biography discipline offered within the Profile part of the appliance.
4. Portfolio (“project”) of 10 to fifteen photos.

Notes:

• A guide maquette (PDF file solely) could also be submitted instead of one of many photos. The software supplies the choice to add the guide maquette within the Descriptions part, which comes after the part the place you add JPG picture recordsdata.
• Both analog and digital images are accepted.
• If Artificial Intelligence (AI) is used, it should not be the first inventive enter. Any use of AI should be disclosed within the artist assertion, together with particulars of the non-AI processes used.

Judging standards

Applications can be evaluated by a panel of distinguished professionals within the discipline of images and the visible arts.

The prize winners can be chosen based mostly on the energy of their inventive imaginative and prescient, the standard and significance of their proposed initiatives, and their contribution to the broader discipline of up to date images.

Award Notification

All candidates can be notified of their award standing through the first week of November 2026.

All award recipients should full a Commonwealth of Virginia W-9 Form to be entered into the state’s cost system. Award funds can be dispersed by verify in January 2027.

The award recipients can be requested to grant VMFA a non-exclusive license to breed at the very least three (3) works for press and publicity functions. Recipients should additionally submit a abstract report of how the award supported their inventive work inside 18 months of receiving it.