The Murray Reich Distinguished Artist Award

About the Award

With the support of an anonymous donor, NYFA created this annual unrestricted cash award to enable mature artists with a long history of creative practice to pursue deeper investigations or new explorations that can inform and enrich their work. It has been developed in memory of the artist Murray Reich, a New York-based painter who also had a highly regarded career as a professor of art at Bard College.

Reich’s widow, Elizabeth Weatherford, commented in 2015: “Murray appreciated the capacity of artists to turn to their inner lives, and to draw out ideas, beauty, mistakes, or innovations. He would be so pleased that this award will open up new possibilities for the selected artists, allowing them to devote concentrated time—to working, or reflection, or travel, or producing projects, or developing their archives and websites.”

This is an invite-only award program. To learn more about grants you may be eligible to apply to, visit grants currently open for application.

About Murray Reich

Born and raised in Coney Island and the South Bronx, Murray Reich (1932-2012) attended City College and received his MFA degree in Painting from Boston University. Following his first solo show in New York at Max Hutchinson Gallery, Reich was awarded a Solomon R. Guggenheim Fellowship. His work was exhibited in two Whitney Annuals and at the American Academy of Arts and Letters, as well as solo shows and group exhibitions. He received other fellowships, including from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Reich was Professor Emeritus of Painting at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, where he taught for 25 years. He served on the faculty of the Graduate Program in Art at Hunter College in New York. He was the inaugural director of Tanglewood’s Summer Program in Art in Massachusetts, and also taught at Boston University. He lived and worked in New York City, Provincetown, and Mt. Tremper in upstate New York.