bennett and schmidt, whose collection has been featured in "american art collector" and "fine art connoisseur" magazines among others, have an extensive collection of works by women figurative realist painters. they have explicitly stated that they believe women have suffered from gender discrimination that has impaired their acceptance as artists. this lack of acceptance is demonstrated in a variety of ways — the number of museum exhibitions and solo shows granted to women, the smaller presence of women on visual fine arts faculties, as well as the lower prices paid to women artists for their work. as these actions have impaired the recognition of these painters, they tended to discourage them at the earliest and most critical moments of their artistic careers. the aim of the prize is to fund an artist for a year to enable them to focus solely on creating art. in a comment to "american art collector" schmidt said: