The Addison is excited to announce that multi-media artist Cynthia Talmadge has been selected as the recipient of the Addison Artist Council’s 2027 Bartlett H. Hayes Jr. Prize. Through this initiative, the Addison will organize Talmadge’s first solo exhibition (to open in September 2027), with an accompanying publication, an artist’s residency, and an acquisition of Talmadge’s work for the museum’s permanent collection.
About the artist
Working in painting, photography, and installation, Talmadge (b. 1989, New York, NY) draws on tabloid culture and the darker undercurrents of contemporary Americana. Tinged with fantasy and desolation and born out of deep historical research, her work betrays a fascination with heightened emotional states, mediated portrayals of those states, and, particularly, the places where both converge. Talmadge uses a variety of techniques to bring to life a body of work that is simultaneously fact and fiction, dramatic and melodramatic, cerebral and kitschy. Her work, whether paintings composed of sand or oil paint or room-sized installations, possesses a visual and psychic tension and wit that keeps meaning evasive and viewers captivated.
About the Addison Artist Council
The Addison Artist Council awards the Hayes Prize every other year. The artist selection process includes nominations from the AAC Steering Committee, which consists of Phillips Academy alumni who are arts professionals and/or supporters of contemporary art, and the Addison’s curatorial department. AAC members then vote on the work to acquire. Previous recipients of the Hayes Prize include painter Reggie Burrows Hodges (2023) and photographer Tommy Kha (2025).
Cover image: Cynthia Talmadge, Half Light (detail), 2023