The National Academy of Design has announced Margaret Grimes has received the Benjamin Altman prize in landscape painting in the 179^th Annual Exhibition of Contemporary American Art.

The National Academy, one of the oldest and most prestigious art organizations in the United States, was founded in 1825 by Hudson River School artist, Samuel F.B. Morse, Asher B. Durand and Thomas Cole to “promote the fine arts in America through instruction and exhibition.”  Members past and present have included Albert Bierstadt, Frederic E. Church, Thomas Eakins, Winslow Homer, John Singer Sargent, Chuck Close, Richard Diebeuhorn, Helen Frankenthaler, Frank Gehry, Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, Frank Lloyd Wright and Andrew Wyeth.

The Invitational Exhibition is a bi-annual event in which the members nominate people from the ranks of the country’s finest contemporary artists who are then judged for acceptance by a curatorial committee.  A second committee then awards the prizes.

Margaret Grimes, a landscape painter who lives in Washington, Connecticut has exhibited regularly in New York and nationally since 1979.  Her work has been seen at the Artists Choice Museum, Blue Mountain Gallery, Fischbach Gallery and Katherina Rich Perlow Gallery, as well as galleries and museums around the country.  Reviewing her most recent one-person show (at Blue Mountain), Paul Smith writes in the May edition of ‘Art in America,’ “Grimes compositions convey the complexity and contingency of contemporary life even though her motif, trees in natural settings with clear blue skies, suggests withdrawal from it…..this show offered some of Grimes’ richest, most powerful painting to date.”  Ms. Grimes is a Connecticut State University Professor at Western Connecticut State University where she is coordinator of the Master’s degree in Fine Arts.  She is a recent recipient of an artist-in-residency from the Weir Farm Trust.

The exhibition will continue through June 20^th.  The National Academy of Design is located at 1083 Fifth Avenue at 89^th Street.  Call 212-369-4880 for details.