East Lansing artist wins ArtPrize’s $100,000 public vote

Kristin Pennock of East Lansing won ArtPrize’s 2026 public-vote grand prize for “Sketchdiet: A Year of Drawing Everything I Ate.” ArtPrize’s winners page says the work was shown at DeVos Place Convention Center. WOOD TV reported the prize is $100,000.

The competition ran Sept. 18 through Oct. 3, ArtPrize’s visitor page says. Public voting ran from noon on Sept. 18 to 10 p.m. on Friday, Oct. 2. The awards celebration was Saturday, Oct. 3, at the Acrisure Amphitheater.

“I never imagined this happening,” Pennock told reporters after the win, WOOD reported, “but it has been the most wonderful experience here with ArtPrize, meeting all the wonderful artists.” The station said the piece is nine 24-foot accordion sketchbooks hung as a three-tiered polyptych. Her statement, as WOOD quoted it, says the drawings “brought joy and diversity” to a diet “constrained by food allergies,” from meals in the United States, Greece, Iceland, Germany, Austria and India.

The juried grand prize went to Robert Horvath for “Room for Lost Paradise,” which ArtPrize lists at Herrema & Sons Piano Co. WOOD reported that prize is also $100,000, and described Horvath as a first-time ArtPrize artist originally from Slovakia. “It’s amazing. I’m really surprised. I don’t know what I was expecting, but it’s quite an honor,” he told the station.

ArtPrize’s winners page describes the jury as critics, curators, educators and gallerists and does not name them. It describes the public prize as the vote of what it calls over 900,000 attendees, and it does not publish a separate counted attendance for 2026. Before the announcement, City Manager Mark Washington touted an anticipated 1 million visitors, WOOD reported. “We do everything grand,” he said. “And with this grand prize, we are differentiating ArtPrize from other art competitions by sending this art piece intergalactic.” WOOD described a plan to digitize the public-vote winner, put it on a laser-engraved plaque and send that plaque into orbit on an aerospace startup’s satellite, 500 kilometers above Earth at 18,000 mph. The station did not name the company.

Viewing the entries was free, ArtPrize’s visitor page says. The organization describes itself there as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit supported by corporate, foundation, governmental and individual donations. The page does not say how much of that support is public money, or which fund pays the $100,000 prizes.

Sources:
ArtPrize, “2026 Winners,” https://www.artprize.org/2026-winners
ArtPrize, visitor FAQs, https://www.artprize.org/visitor-faqs
Rachel Van Gilder, “Yearlong drawn diary ‘Sketchdiet’ wins ArtPrize 2026,” WOOD TV, Oct. 3, 2026, https://www.woodtv.com/news/artprize/artprize-2026-awards-grand-prize-winners/

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