Ada del Pilar Ortiz Receives 2025 Pocantico Prize

The Rockefeller Brothers Fund (RBF) has announced it will award Ada del Pilar Ortiz the 2025 Pocantico Prize for Visual Artists. The artist will receive a $25,000 grant and a two-month residency at The Pocantico Center, a cultural venue and conference center on the former Rockefeller family estate in Tarrytown, NY. The public is invited to meet the artist and witness her creative process firsthand during an open studio event at the David Rockefeller Creative Arts Center on November 8.

Ada del Pilar Ortiz is a multidisciplinary artist based in Ponce, Puerto Rico. Her life-size prints of buildings and other ornamental features of the vernacular architecture in Puerto Rico explore the meaning of home, the remnants of built space, and relationships with memory. Ortiz’s installations examine how political, social, economic, and domestic transformations of the built environment influence and shape those who pass through it, like abandoned homes in Puerto Rico that mirror the experience of Puerto Ricans whose communities have been displaced by forces beyond their control.

“Through the material explorations of my work, I translate the traces of the built environment into mirrors of our collective memory,” said Ortiz. “The Pocantico Prize offers me the physical space to expand into large-scale, multi-media installations, while its environment inspires continued reflection on how the architectural body carries both our histories and our unfolding futures.”

The RBF established the Pocantico Prize in 2022 with the launch of the David Rockefeller Creative Arts Center at Pocantico (DR Center). The prize recognizes U.S. artists with a trajectory of artistic excellence and potential for further growth and societal impact. It is awarded in alternating years to an artist working in the Hudson Valley and an artist selected from a national pool. Previous Pocantico Prize winners include Athena LaTocha (2022), Amaryllis R. Flowers (2023), and Chie Fueki (2024). The Pocantico Prize is funded by the RBF Culpeper Arts & Culture program, which makes grants to arts organizations in the Fund’s home city of New York.

“The Pocantico Prize was created to provide emerging artists with both the resources and dedicated space they need to advance their practice at a critical moment in their careers,” said Ben Rodriguez-Cubenas, director of the RBF Arts & Culture program. “The arts are especially critical in challenging times, fostering deeper understanding of the human experience and providing fresh perspectives on persistent problems. Ada del Pilar Ortiz exemplifies the promise artists hold in helping us understand the world and our place in it.”

Ortiz will work in the 900-square-foot visual arts studio at the DR Center from September 29 to November 30, 2025. Her studio will be open to the public on November 8 as part of the 2025 RiverArts Studio Tour, an inspiring weekend highlighting artists’ work throughout the Hudson Valley river towns. Admission is free, but all visitors must reserve a free timed-entry ticket at pocantico.org.