What we make, makes us.
The Spector Craft Prize is an annual initiative that champions excellence in American craft. We aim to strengthen and protect craft’s role in our culture, invest in the next generation of artists and makers, and create the connections that carry craft forward.
In preserving craft, we preserve more than what we make. We preserve knowledge, imagination, and something essential about what it means to be human.
Spector Craft Prize
Honoring excellence
The Spector Craft Prize recognizes one established artist each year whose work reflects a singular vision, deep knowledge of material and process, and a lasting contribution to American craft.
Sharif Bey is the inaugural recipient of the Spector Craft Prize. A ceramicist, sculptor, and educator, Bey draws from functional pottery and the visual traditions of Africa and Oceania, reimagining ornament and familiar forms at a monumental scale. His work challenges the boundaries between function and sculpture.
The Prize includes the acquisition of Bey’s Raptor Return by Crystal Bridges for its permanent collection, with funding from the Spector Family Foundation.
Sharif Bey
2026 Spector Craft Prize for Emerging Artists
Investing in the next generation
The Spector Craft Prize for Emerging Artists recognizes exceptional makers who bring rigor, imagination, and a distinctive point of view to their practice—and who show the potential to contribute meaningfully to the future of American craft.
Craft is no longer on the margins of the cultural conversation— it is becoming central to it. The Spector Craft Prize exists to uplift artists who take part in the intelligent transformation of American craft traditions.
Creating connections
November 10–12, 2026
Crystal Bridges, Bentonville, Arkansas
The inaugural Spector Craft Summit brings the Prize recipients together with artists, curators, scholars, designers, collectors, and cultural leaders for three days of conversation and exchange.
We will consider where American craft is going—and what it means to carry traditions forward.
2026-27 Spector Craft Prize for Emerging Artists
Applications open November 1, 2026.
Applications for the 2026–27 Spector Craft Prize for Emerging Artists open November 1, 2026, and close February 15, 2027.