The Municipal Art Society of New York (MAS) announced today winners of the 2026 Brendan Gill Prize and MASterworks Design Awards.
This year’s Brendan Gill Prize winner is Shervone Neckles for a public artwork, The Land Between Open Water, at the Westchester Square-East Tremont Avenue subway station, commissioned by MTA Arts & Design as tribute to the Indigenous Siwanoy people and the history of the Bronx.
MASterworks Design Awards winners include Studio Gang, SCAPE, Dattner Architects, Bernheimer Architecture, Studio Joseph, Adjaye Associates, and others.
The Brendan Gill Prize was established in 1987 by MAS board member Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. It is named after the renowned theater and architecture critic, and “honors a new creative work that best captures the spirit and energy of New York City.”
Neckles’s award-winning work, The Land Between Open Water, consists of panels integrated into the Bronx subway station’s elevated platform wall. John Haworth, Gill Prize chair, said in a statement the artwork “illuminates and celebrates a significant chapter of our local cultural history.”
For jury member Dario Calmese, The Institute of Black Imagination’s founder and CEO, Land Between Open Water deftly uses “shadow and light to enliven the everyday for Bronx commuters, while also revealing the hidden layers and histories that lie just underneath the pavement.”
MASterworks Design Awards were also announced by MAS in the following categories: Best New Building, Urban Landscape, Restoration, Adaptive Reuse, Urban Amenity, Environmental Innovation, Public Art Restoration, and Special Recognition.
The Best New Building Awards went to the Shirley Chisholm Recreation Center by Studio Gang, in the East Flatbush section of Brooklyn, and Studio Museum in Harlem by Adjaye Associates and Cooper Robertson, which opened last December.
In a statement, Tricia Shimamura, NYC Parks Commissioner, said the new Shirley Chisholm Recreation Center “has a contoured and transparent look featuring mass timber and vibrant colors that welcome visitors—and was created three years faster and ten percent cheaper thanks to design-build.”
In the Best New Urban Landscape category, awards went to the Davis Center at the Harlem Meer by Susan T Rodriguez | Architecture • Design, Mitchell Giurgola Architects, and the Central Park Conservancy; and Kelly Park Playground, an in-house NYCParks project.
“The multi-use Davis Center in Central Park provides a pool and skating rink for the community while restoring the park’s natural setting, while the rejuvenated Kelly Park Playground offers an accessible and engaging playspace for all children,” Shimamura added.
Selldorf Architects and Beyer Blinder Belle won awards in the Best Restoration category for the Frick renovation, and SOM New York for the Waldorf Astoria Hotel renovation.
PAU and Field Operations, and Studio Joseph won Best Adaptive Reuse awards for the Refinery at Domino and Manhattan Pet Adoption Center projects, respectively. (The Refinery at Domino was also Project of the Year in AN’s inaugural The Faces of our City award.)
Gowanus Lowlands by SCAPE, Gowanus Canal Conservancy, and NYC DCP was the Best Environmental Innovation winner; and the DUMBO Archway Plaza Bleachers by AECOM the Best New Urban Amenity winner.
The Best Public Art Restoration award went to the team that restored Exodus and Dance frieze by Richmond Barthé at NYCHA Kingsborough Houses in Brooklyn.
Lastly, Special Recognition awards went to the New York City Department of Transportation’s revitalization of Gotham Park, and PENN 2 by MdeAS Architects and Plaza 33 by MNLA.
“From the integration of resilient infrastructure to the reimagining of historic landmarks to the thoughtful creation of community centers, I am proud to recognize this broad scale of projects—because good design is more than aesthetics,” MAS president Keri Butler said in a statement, “it is a practical tool that serves and inspires the people who call New York home.”
On April 21, MAS will honor the recipients and projects at an awards ceremony held at the Museum of the City of New York.
The article was updated March 11.
