Vera List Prize for Writing on the Visual Arts

The MIT List Visual Arts Center sponsors the annual Vera List Prize for Writing on the Visual Arts. This writing contest is part of the Karmel Writing Prizes and is open to MIT undergraduate and graduate students.

The MIT List Visual Arts Center is pleased to sponsor the 2024 Vera List Prize for Writing on the Visual Arts. Visit the event page here.

 

2024 Vera List Prizes

First Prize Winner

Sophia Chen, undergraduate student double majoring in Mechanical Engineering and Design at MIT.

Read Black Cobwebs

"Each is a declaration: I am making portraits of my great grandparents and grandparents and parents out of my hair. But my hair is made out of my great grandparents and grandparents and parents. Each is also a question: What makes you? What are you made of? What do you make?"     –Sophia Chen, Black Cobwebs

Four white squares with black borders positioned in a grid shape on a white background. Each square depicts and image of figures made out of human hair.
Collection of blue-tinted photographs organized in rows on a white background. Each image is overlayed with human hair.

Second Prize Winner

Kartik Chandra, a PhD candidate at MIT's Computer Science & Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL).

Read A Strange Thing Happens when You Live With A Work of Art

"The photograph that once stood for seeing motion in stillness now stands for seeing stillness in motion. The graduate student obsessed with beholding the moment has learned at last to bear the expanse of time."     –Kartik Chandra, A Strange Thing Happens when You Live With A Work of Art

Black and white photograph of an older woman feeding two hummingbirds out of her hands while a third flys near her forehead.
Four by three grid of still images of a horse running in motion.