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What is the Herb Alpert Award?

The Herb Alpert Award in the Arts is an unrestricted prize of $75,000 given annually to risk-taking mid-career artists working in the fields of dance, film/video, music, theatre and the visual arts.

The prize was initiated and funded by the Herb Alpert Foundation and has been administered by California Institute of the Arts since 1994. The Herb Alpert Award honors and supports artists respected for their creativity, ingenuity, and bodies of work, at a moment in their lives when they are poised to propel their art in new and unpredictable directions. The Herb Alpert Award recognizes experimenters who are making something that matters within and beyond their field.

Announcements

May 4, 2022
For the past 28 years, the Herb Alpert Foundation and the California Institute of the Arts have awarded $75,000 prizes to five artists in the fields of Music, Dance, Visual Arts, Theater and Film/Video. Twenty 22 is now the third year that the honor has gone to 10 artists, two in each category, in recognition of the burden the pandemic has placed on artists. Today, May 4, 2022, the winners of this year’s Herb Alpert Award in the Arts are to be officially announced.
2022 Herb Alpert Award Winners: Yanira Castro, nia love, Bani Khoshnoudi, Terence Nance, Tomeka Reid, Cory Smythe, Aleshea Harris, Virginia Grise, Guadalupe Maravilla, and Martine Syms
May 3, 2022
“The ten artists we celebrate this year are explorers, unafraid of the unknown.” -Herb Alpert
Jul 8, 2021
Watch the full and highlighted versions of the 2021 Herb Alpert Awards Virtual Ceremony, honoring ten artists in the fields of Dance, Film/Video, Music, Theatre, and Visual Arts    

2022 Panelists

Dance
Roya Amirsoleymani
Thomas F. DeFrantz
Olga Garay-English
artistic director & curator of public engagement, Portland Institute for Contemporary Art
Portland, OR
performer, professor of theatre and performance studies, Northwestern University
Chicago, IL
international arts consultant
Los Angeles, CA
Film/Video
Romi Crawford
Beatriz Santiago Muñoz
Deborah Stratman
art historian, professor of Visual and Critical Studies, School of the Art Institute of Chicago
Chicago, IL
artist, Herb Alpert Award Winner
San Juan, PR
filmmaker/artist, professor of Art, University of Illinois at Chicago, Herb Alpert Award Winner
Chicago, IL
Music
George Lewis
Gustavo Matamoros
Myra Melford
composer, Edwin H. Case Professor of American Music, Composition & Historical Musicology, Columbia University, Herb Alpert Award winner
New York, NY
composer, interdisciplinary artist, founder, Subtropics Festival
Miami, FL
pianist, composer, improvisor, professor, UC Berkeley, Herb Alpert Award winner
Berkeley, CA
Theatre
Erik Ehn
Maria Manuela Goyanes
Lloyd Suh
playwright, educator, Herb Alpert Award winner
Albuquerque, NM
Artistic Director, Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company
Washington, D.C.
playwright, Herb Alpert Award winner
South Orange, NJ
Visual Arts
Cecilia Fajardo-Hill
Eungie Joo
Claire Tancons
independent curator, art historian, writer
Los Angeles, CA
Curator of Contemporary Art, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
San Francisco, CA
curator, writer, researcher
Paris, works in situ