Current Winners
Rosario and Roberto are artists, educators, and childhood friends, and the founders of R&R STUDIOS, a multidisciplinary platform merging art, architecture, and the city. Their artworks create encounters between stories and places, weaving together the everyday and the fantastic, the poetic and the political. They create architectural social sculptures that blur the boundaries between art and life and perform as instant landmarks.
The $75,000 Lifetime Achievement Award goes to these trailblazing artists which works include the biggest “M” in the world in Miami; All Together Now in downtown Denver; The Living Room, their iconic Miami home turned inside-out; Bésame Mucho at the Coachella Music Festival, Building Blocks, a square in Seattle and Peace & Love a Parkland Memorial sponsored by Bloomberg Philanthropies. They recently unveiled three artworks for Princeton University Art Museum documented in The Home We Share: Three Social Sculptures for Princeton University (Park Books, 2025), and Beauty for All, a visual manifesto for the 2025 Chicago Architecture Biennial.
Past Winners
José Bedia
2025 Lifetime Achievement Award Winner
Margarita Cano
2023 Lifetime Achievement Award Winner
Robert McKnight
2022 Lifetime Achievement Award Winner
2020 Creator Award Winner
2020 Creator Award Winner
César Trasobares
2021 Lifetime Achievement Award Winner
Maria Martinez-Cañas
2020 Lifetime Achievement Award Winner
Karen Rifas
2025 Creator Award Winner
2019 Lifetime Achievement Award Winner
2019 Lifetime Achievement Award Winner
Edouard Duval-Carrié
2018 Lifetime Achievement Award Winner
Inspired by Oolite alum Michael Richards (1963 – 2001), this award is given to a Miami-Dade artist who has created a recognized body of original, high-quality works of art over a sustained period of time and who, through their practice, is achieving the highest levels of professional distinction in visual arts. The award will support the artist’s practice with $75,000.
The Lifetime Achievement Award is a nomination based award, given to a Miami-Dade artist who has created a recognized body of original, high-quality works of art over a sustained period of time and who, through their practice, is achieving the highest levels of professional distinction in visual arts. This artist is someone who has established and sustained their practice in Miami and has given back to the community throughout their career in a variety of ways. The award will support the selected artist’s practice and creative growth through a stipend of $75,000 over a two-year period.
Michael Richards (1963 – 2001), to whom this award pays tribute, was an incisive, provocative, and poetic artist whose body of work primarily addresses racial inequity and social injustice. Richards, an Oolite Arts alum, passed away tragically in his art studio in the World Trade Center during the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. A jury of national and local curators and experts will both nominate candidates and select the award winner.
