The Ellies, Oolite Arts Awards are designed to celebrate and recognize artists’ careers in a variety of visual arts practices. These awards are offered in five categories to support emerging, working, established, and professionally accomplished artists, filmmakers, art educators, and curators in South Florida.
The Ellies, Oolite Arts Awards consist of five categories: Creator Award, Art Teacher Travel Award, Curatorial Practice and Critical Writing Award, A Better World Award, and the Lifetime Achievement Award, Inspired by Michael Richards.
Lifetime Achievement Award, Inspired by Michael Richards
The Lifetime Achievement Award, Inspired by Michael Richards, is given to one artist who has created a recognized body of original works of art over a sustained period of time and who, through their practice, is achieving the highest levels of professional distinction in the visual arts. This artist is someone who has had an impact on South Florida 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.
A cohort of artists, curators, museum directors, and art professionals from South Florida will nominate candidates, and a multi-member, independent national and international jury—composed of artists, curators, museum directors, and art professionals, including those working in film—selects the award recipient.
About Michael Richards
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 Better World Award
A Better World Award is given to one artist who makes South Florida a better, stronger, and more united community through their creative works. The recipient of this award will exemplify the power of art to not only reflect the world, but to transform it. The Oolite Arts A Better World Award recognizes a local artist whose work contributes meaningfully to social justice, environmental sustainability, mental health and healing, cultural preservation or innovation, community empowerment, inclusiveness, or global awareness or peacebuilding. This award will support the selected artist’s practice and creative growth with a $25,000 stipend.
A cohort of artists, curators, museum directors, art professionals, and social justice leaders from South Florida will nominate candidates, and a multi-member, independent national and international jury—composed of artists, curators, museum directors, and art professionals, including those working in film—selects the award recipient.
Creator Award
The Creator Award provides $10,000 in unrestricted funding to thirty-five individual artists across South Florida, offering flexible support that reflects the realities of sustaining a creative practice.
Unlike project-based grants, these awards are not tied to a specific outcome. By remaining unrestricted, the awards remove common barriers and allow artists to allocate resources where they are most needed.
Art Teacher Travel Award
The Art Teacher Travel Award provides $5,000 each to six public and charter K–12 school art teachers to support travel that deepens their knowledge and strengthens their classroom practice.
Through this opportunity, teachers engage with new ideas, artists, and cultural contexts that can be meaningfully integrated into their curriculum. The award is intended to support both the educator and their wider school community, with a focus on translating these experiences into enriched learning for students and opportunities for broader community engagement.
Curatorial Practice and Critical Writing Award
Supporting curators and writers shaping critical discourse in contemporary art
The Curatorial Practice and Critical Writing Award provides $10,000 to two curators or art writers whose work advances critical discourse in contemporary visual art while supporting the visibility, understanding, and long-term development of artists and their practices.
Recognizing curatorial practice and art writing as essential to a thriving artistic ecosystem, the award supports individuals whose research, interpretation, exhibitions, essays, and public engagement help provide artists with greater visibility, contextualization, and sustained critical engagement. Through this initiative, Oolite Arts affirms the vital role that criticism, curatorial research, and writing play in helping artists connect with broader audiences, institutions, and public discourse.
Awards
The Ellies, Oolite Arts Awards
Celebrating the artists who make Miami
The Ellies, Oolite Arts Awards fuel bold, career-defining work by artists, filmmakers, art educators, and curators across South Florida. Since 2018, the program has awarded more than $4.1 million in support, and now offers unrestricted funding, empowering recipients to exhibit at major museums and galleries, produce award-winning work and create art that shapes our community.
What would you do with an Ellie?
We’re delighted to name these awards in honor of our founder, Ellie Schneiderman, a visionary who recognized the power of supporting artists in their work. As Ellie often said, Oolite Arts is here to “help artists help themselves.”
The Ellies, Oolite Arts Awards
Meet the Ellies, Oolite Arts Awards winners
