LINCOLN, Mass. – A Boston-based sculptor who works primarily in wood is the 25th recipient of the Rappaport Prize. Alison Croney Moses was announced today as the 2025 recipient by The Trustees’ deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum. Her Rappaport Art Prize lecture will take place Oct. 22, 2025, at 6 p.m. at deCordova.
Established in 2000 and endowed in perpetuity in 2010, the prize was established by The Phyllis and Jerome Lyle Rappaport Foundation to celebrate the achievements of contemporary artists in New England.
Moses currently is a featured artist in the Boston Public Art Triennial, co-curated by The Trustees’ Associate Curator of Native American Art Tess Lukey, and was also awarded the ICA Boston’s Foster Prize this year.
Alison Croney Moses shared, “I am honored to receive the 2025 Rappaport Art Prize and truly humbled to be included in a roster of such talented previous recipients. As I continue to build a full-time art practice, the financial support from the prize is invaluable and will directly contribute to my ability to continue to make meaningful work.”
Born and raised in North Carolina by Guyanese parents, Moses says her memories of childhood are filled with making clothing, food, furniture, and art. She carries these habits into adulthood and parenting by creating experiences, conversations, and educational programs that cultivate the current and next generation of artists and leaders in arts and crafts fields. Her work is in the collections at the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Museum of Fine Arts Houston, and the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum.
“We at the Phyllis and Jerome Lyle Rappaport Foundation are exceedingly pleased with Alison being named this year’s art prize winner,” said Jonathan Rapaport, Foundation board member and the Chair of the Foundation’s Arts & Culture Committee. “Her sculptures are beguiling with their textures and folds, color and curves. By appealing to our senses of touch, sight and even smell, these sculptures invite inquisitiveness. But they often conceal as much as they reveal. Close examination forces shifting one’s perspective, revealing Alison’s thematic layering. What at first seems plainly literal might unravel into abstraction. A piece that seems playful can slowly evoke duress. As much as the viewer might be drawn to interrogate Alison’s work, one can’t help suspecting the work is also interrogating you.
“We are thrilled to welcome Alison Croney Moses into our community of art prize recipients, and look forward to watching her artistry evolve,” Rapaport added.
“We are enormously proud to recognize Alison Croney Moses as this year’s Rappaport Art Prize winner,” shares Sarah Montross, Museum Director and Chief Curator at deCordova. “A beloved artist, Moses sculpts wood to evoke sensations of shelter, interconnection, and joy, giving shape to our inner lives and relationships with each other.”
Moses says the wooden objects she creates reach out to your senses – the smell of cedar, the color of honey or the deep blue sea, the round form that signifies safety and warmth, the gentle curve that beckons to be touched. Trained as a furniture maker, her sculptures use a combination of timeless woodworking techniques, such as coopering and bent lamination, to create delicate, intricate shapes with a subtle nod to female form.
Her inspiration, she says, comes from the materials and processes themselves, capturing universal forms and impressions from nature and the human body. Other times, it comes from photographs, gatherings, and memories that serve as an impetus for her explorations of Black motherhood, where she examines her experiences of childhood and motherhood, reframing memories for her children and her own healing.
“I strive to create situations where people are compelled to interact, to express, and challenge themselves to heal, to stand taller, to build community, and to work toward a more just future,” Moses says. “This occurs in a classroom where my presence shows that art and woodworking is a valid pursuit for young people who look like me or when I bring together mothers of color in Boston to build solidarity, support, and friendship while we navigate raising Black and Brown children to value their own identities in a white society, or it happens within people as they interact with my work, hopefully having a lasting impact that can be felt beyond that moment.”
Moses is the recipient of the 2025 Foster Prize from ICA Boston, the 2024 Black Mountain College International Artist Prize, the 2023 Boston Artadia Award; the 2022 USA Fellowship in Craft; and was a finalist of the 2024 Loewe Foundation Craft Prize. Her work has been featured in Crafted Kinship by Malene Barnett and the 50th Anniversary Issue of Fine Woodworking Magazine. She recently was named one of the 2023 WBUR 10 Makers. She holds a master’s degree in Sustainable Business & Communities from Goddard College, and a bachelor’s degree in fine arts in Furniture Design from the Rhode Island School of Design.
More information about the Oct. 22 Rappaport Art Prize Lecture featuring Alison Croney Moses can be found at thetrustees.org/RappaportLecture.
About the Rappaport Art Prize
Since its inception in 2000, the Rappaport Art Prize has been an investment in both individual artists and the broader art community. Founded and funded by the Phyllis and Jerome Lyle Rappaport Foundation, the Rappaport Art Prize follows the Foundation’s mission of promoting leadership in art, public policy, and medical research. Endowed at, and selected annually by, deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, the Rappaport Art Prize supports artists while educating the public about developments in American contemporary art. In 2022, the prize increased from $35,000 to $50,000.
The prize celebrates the achievement and potential of an artist who has demonstrated significant creativity and vision and encourages the recipient to continue a career of innovative art making. Together, deCordova and the Rappaport Foundation hope to create a community of accomplished artists whose careers have been enhanced by the recognition of the Rappaport Prize.
Each year, deCordova invites art professionals from around the country — museum directors, curators, collectors, and artists — to submit nominations for the Prize based on established criteria. After reviewing the nominations, as well as suggesting their own nominations, deCordova convened a jury to consider twelve finalists. This year’s jury for the Rappaport Prize included Pieranna Cavalchini, Curator of Contemporary Art, Isabella Steward Gardner Museum; Petra Slinkard, Director of Curatorial Affairs, The Nancy B. Putnam Curator of Fashion and Textiles, Peabody Essex Museum; and Sonya Clark, artist and 2020 Rappaport Prize winner.
For more information visit thetrustees.org/program/rappaport-prize.
About deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum
Established in 1950 and located just twenty miles west of Boston, deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum is dedicated to fostering the creation and exploration of contemporary sculpture and art through a dynamic slate of rotation exhibitions, innovative learning opportunities, a constantly changing thirty-acre landscape of large-scale, outdoor, modern, and contemporary sculpture, and site-specific installations. To learn more, visit thetrustees.org/decordova.
More about The Trustees
Founded by landscape architect Charles Eliot in 1891, The Trustees has, for more than 130 years, been a catalyst for important ideas, endeavors, and progress in Massachusetts. As a steward of distinctive and dynamic places of both historic and cultural value, The Trustees is one of the oldest preservation and conservation organizations, and its landscapes and landmarks continue to inspire discussion, innovation, and action today as they did in the past. We are a nonprofit, supported by members, friends and donors and our more than 120 sites are destinations for residents, members, and visitors alike, welcoming millions of guests annually. Learn more at www.thetrustees.org.
Past Rappaport Art Prize Winners
2024 Jeremy Frey
2023 Tomashi Jackson
2022 Steve Locke
2021 Katherine Bradford
2020 Sonya Clark
2019 Daniela Rivera
2018 Titus Kaphar
2017 Sam Durant
2016 Barkley Hendricks
2015 Matt Saunders
2014 Liz Deschenes
2013 Ann Pibal
2012 Suara Welitoff
2011 Orly Genger
2010 Liza Johnson
2009 Dave Cole
2008 Ursula von Rydingsvard
2007 Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons
2006 Abelardo Morell
2005 Sarah Walker
2004 Debra Olin
2003 John Bisbee
2002 Lars-Erik Fisk
2001 Annee Spileos Scott
2000 Jennifer Hall
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