December 19, 2025
Milwaukee, WI
2026 Ruth Awards
Artist and DoVA faculty member Anna Martine Whitehead has been named as a 2026 Ruth Award recipient, the third edition of the Ruth Foundation for the Arts' annual prize awarding contemporary artists working across North America with a no-strings-attached $100,000 prize.
Through an annual nomination process, Ruth Arts award artists who are pushing the boundaries and whose practices are anchored in materiality: whether by embarking on transformative projects that are accelerating the field forward, building deeper relationships and connections across communities, developing artistic approaches to structural change, or undertaking work in community with their fellow artists. Artists that are makers, thinkers, and teachers, neighbors and organizers, artists working across material intersections.
From the press release: “Each year, we receive a multitude of nominations that guide us towards the most inspiring and thought provoking artists and practices today,” says Program Director Kim Nguyen. “Our world is better and more complex with artists in it, and this award acknowledges the necessity of supporting rigorous creative practice, critical thinking, and the freedom of artistic expression. It is an honour to reward this year’s artists for being responsive and empathetic, for their dedication to emergent strategies, for their constant pursuit of the big idea. We hope that this recognition carries them onwards into the future—we need them more than ever.”