Gateway to British Art Prizewinners 2021

The Yale Center for British Art has partnered with Gateway Community College (GCC) to launch the Gateway to British Art Prize. The aim of this initiative is for students across academic disciplines to select one artwork from the museum's collection and to write about it in a thoughtful, persuasive way.

First place: Ammar Badawi

In his reflection on Maggi Hambling’s Excavations at the Royal Mint (1985), Badawi considers how the inevitability of death offers motivation to find meaning in a life well-lived.

Read his essay

Second place: Veronica Novack

Novack offers a thoughtful interpretation of Thomas Gainsborough’s painting Landscape with Cattle (ca. 1773). The idyllic, idealized pastoral scene serves as a reminder to appreciate and find harmony in the simple beauty of nature.

Read her essay

Runner-up: Brianna Dragunoff

Dragunoff analyzes how Samuel Collings uses detail and color to evoke a frigid day in Frost on the Thames (1788–89), and interprets the painting through her personal experience as a New Englander.