parsons prize
parsons prize
The Parsons Prize for Military-Affiliated Artists is an award recognizing outstanding work by artists with military affiliations. Founded by the Center for Military-Affiliated Students and Parsons School of Design, the prize honors the depth, rigor, and vision that military-affiliated artists bring to contemporary art practices. With a $3,000 1st place award, and $1,000 2nd and 3rd place awards, juried by arts professionals, the prize affirms a commitment to supporting artists whose perspectives are shaped by service and transformation.
In the post-WWII era, The New School became a hub for veterans returning from service, significantly influencing the cultural and intellectual landscape of Greenwich Village. Notably, veterans such as Dan Wolf and Edwin Fancher, who attended The New School, went on to co-found The Village Voice, contributing to the area's vibrant media and arts scene. The Parsons Prize for Military-Affiliated Artists is part of The New School’s initiative to reaffirm its commitment to this population.
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U.S. military veterans
U.S. service members, active or reserves
Children, spouses, and siblings of U.S. service members or veterans
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painting, drawing, sculpture, collage, printmaking, photography, video, textiles, sound, installation, performance—all forms of contemporary art
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Submissions will be accepted until 11:59pm on September 29, 2025.
Artists will be notified of results by October 20, 2025.
2025 jurors
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Selena Kimball is a visual artist whose work transforms historical materials—books, newspapers, photographic archives—into deeply personal reconfigurations that question the authority of these materials to define our knowledge of landscape, territory, and place. Working across photomontage, collage, sculpture, and installation, Kimball is driven by an intimate understanding of how mediated representation often fails to capture lived reality. Her process deliberately disrupts the established visual record, honoring instead the body's complex and often unshareable way of knowing and remembering.
Kimball has exhibited nationally and internationally, including the Katonah Museum of Art, the Portland Museum of Art in Maine, the Center for Contemporary Art, Warsaw, and the Museum of the Romanian Peasant, Bucharest. Her work has been reviewed in The Boston Globe, The New York Observer, Frankfurter Allgemeine and covered in Bomb Magazine, among others. Kimball has been awarded the Pollock-Krasner, a Jerome Foundation grant, an Asian Cultural Council award, and a Robert Rauschenberg Foundation Archives Research Fellowship. She is a NYSCA/NYFA fellow, a MacDowell Fellow, and a Guggenheim Fellow. Her long-term collaborations include films, writing, and experimental research with visual anthropologist Alyssa Grossman. Kimball splits her time between Maine, where she was born and raised, and Brooklyn, New York where she lives and works. She is co-founder and co-director, with Pascal Glissmann, of the Observational Practices Lab at Parsons, the New School, where she is currently Associate Professor of Contemporary Art Practice.
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Dr. Sam Mejias is Dean of the School of Art, Media and Technology, and Associate Professor of Social Justice and Community Engagement in the School of Design Strategies, where he has taught since 2020. He is a transdisciplinary teacher and scholar, researcher, and creative multi-instrumentalist and sound designer. Sam's research focuses on young people, the arts, and learning, and on social justice and civic engagement in design, discourse, and communication practices. He has collaborated on projects exploring how arts and science and technology-led transdisciplinary practices can build equity in youth learning outcomes, and how community-based arts programs influence young people’s life and career trajectories. Work from these studies has been published in Leonardo, Educational Researcher, Science Education, and the Journal of Research in Science Teaching. Sam holds an MA in International Educational Development from Columbia University Teachers College, and a PhD in Human Rights Education from University College London. Prior to joining Parsons, he was a Research Fellow at London School of Economics and Political Science.
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Kevin Sparkowich is an artist and Marine Corps veteran based in Brooklyn, NY. His work explores themes of violence, myth, and the cultural residue of masculine initiation through painting, installation, and sculpture. He received his BFA from Parsons School of Design and has had work exhibited in NADA and featured in the Journal of Art Criticism.
faq
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No. We see you as more than your service. This award recognizes military-affiliated artists for the rigor, depth, and vision of their practice, regardless of subject matter.
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No. Submissions are 100% free.
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No. The only restrictions of the award can be found in the eligibility tab above.
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