Awards
Arthur Kingsley Porter Prize
The Arthur Kingsley Porter Prize was established in 1957, in memory of a founding member of the CAA and one of the first American scholars of the discipline. This award seeks to encourage high scholarly standards among younger members of the profession. The prize is awarded for a distinguished article published in The Art Bulletin during the previous calendar year (2012 for the 2013 award) by a scholar of any nationality who is under the age of thirty-five or who has received the doctorate not more than ten years before acceptance of the article for publication.
2012 Winner
Rebecca Molholt’s article “Roman Labyrinth Mosaics and the Experience of Motion,” published in the September 2011 issue of The Art Bulletin, is an imaginative study of seven North African mosaics that were once floors in Roman bathhouses. She introduces a fresh methodology for their assessment, building on a distinction that Walter Benjamin drew between “vertical and horizontal forms of viewing.” Moholt argues that mosaics have long been read as if they were vertical easel paintings rather than understood as “materials underfoot,” which are experienced while kinetically moving over their horizontal surfaces. She uncovers a metaphoric reading of these mosaics that relates the labyrinths, their subject matter, and architectural context—the Roman bath—to athleticism and heroism.
Past Winners
One of CAA’s longest-running awards, the Porter prize has been awarded to superb articles in Western European art and architecture but has increasingly recognized a wider range of topics (in American, Chinese, Japanese, and Assyrian art) since the 1990s. Past winners include three-time winner Irving Lavin (1960, 1963, and 1970) and, most recently, Marnin Young, Fabio Barry, and Elizabeth Marlowe. Of special note is the 1967 Porter given to Linda Nochlin for her article “Gustave Courbet’s Meeting: A Portrait of the Artist as a Wandering Jew.”
Read a list of all winners of the Arthur Kingsley Porter Prize from 1958 to the present.
Award Nominations
CAA will begin accepting nominations for the 2013 Arthur Kingsley Porter Prize in spring 2013.
