Hermitage Artists Retreat Expands Reach
Gifted Land on Manastoa Key, Florida
By: Jay Handelman - Mar 31, 2026
Since Scottish sculptor Malcolm Robertson became the first Hermitage fellow in 2003, more than 850 other artists have followed. While it has attracted often prominent artists from around the country, many locals don’t know much about the Hermitage’s role as a kind of creative incubator, or that it is located in Englewood at about the midway point of Manasota Key.
Even as it recovers from twin hurricanes in 2024, the Hermitage is going through a major growth spurt with new housing for artists and expanded programming opportunities that will likely make it a more prominent player in Sarasota County’s arts scene.
Artistic Director and CEO Andy Sandberg said the Hermitage is still waiting for Sarasota County, from which it leases its property, to make repairs to several of the historic cottages that were heavily damaged in back-to-back hurricanes in 2024. The Hermitage has offered to take on the repairs itself, and even to buy the property outright, but those efforts were rebuffed.
But it has found temporary shelter for the artists at nearby homes, and in January, the Morrison and Steans family donated 6.5 acres of land just a half mile from the Hermitage’s main campus, valued at about $12 million. The Hermitage said it is “one of the largest land gifts of its kind to a non-profit arts organization.”
In early March, Ringling College of Art and Design transferred ownership of the former Englewood Art Center to the Hermitage for expanded operations and new community programs. The college closed the center in May 2025.
All that news comes on top of what is usually the major Hermitage headlines in the first part of the year, the announcement of its two commission programs – the Hermitage Greenfield Prize and the Hermitage Major Theater Award.
Expanding programs and space
The new property additions will allow the the Hermitage to host up to 14 artists at the same time, once the original cottages are repaired and reopened. More artists means more community programs, some of which could be presented at what was long the Englewood Art Center.
The art center offers about 10,000 square feet across two acres of land, and during a recent interview Sandberg said it all came together quickly.
“We’re still talking about and planning what we will do with the building. We want to engage the community, maximizing the engagement from Englewood and beyond. When we do classes or workshops, we want to do it for a meaningful sizable constituency, not just a few random people on a Tuesday. We want thought behind the programs and that takes time.”
The Englewood community reached out to the Hermitage when Ringling College announced last year that it would shut down the art center, Sandberg said.
The land gift “allows us to engage our alumni more and do more project residencies,” Sandberg said. “We are proudly known as an arts incubator. People come to create and conceive. We’re not trying to be a producing organization, but we are trying to be more of a 360 incubation experience. We want more stories of a composer coming and then returning with a librettist and lead actor or singer for their new musical or opera.”
The art center gives the Hermitage additional studio and gallery space as well as a home for programs and performances.
“We haven’t had an ideal space of our own in South County,” Sandberg said.
Visual art has been the hardest artform to showcase during the development process, he said. “You have to almost see a finished product to understand it. We’re still planning how we can engage our local artist community. But this will connect us more to Englewood and the Englewood arts community. That building has a lot of history and meaning to a lot of people.”
Supporting artist development
The two major artist prizes overseen by the Hermitage have brought a wide range of creative people to Sarasota County to develop new work.
The Hermitage Greenfield Prize, launched by the late Bob and Louise Greenfield in 2008, offers $35,000 to artists in different fields that rotate each year among music, drama and visual art, with occasional other art forms involved. This year’s prize in visual art was awarded to Charisse Pearlina Weston, a rising artist who told ArtsBeat she was finally able to devote herself full time to her creative work just three years ago. She plans to create a piece that combines words and a variety of materials including glass, to reflect on the conditions of Black life.
Winners of the Hermitage Greenfield Prize are given two years to create new work before an exhibit or performance is arranged with a local arts organization. Sandy Rodriguez, the last visual arts winner, was the focus of an exhibit at The Ringling. ensembleNEWSRQ performed the premiere of Angélica Negrón’s “Azul Naranja Salado” in 2024, and Asolo Repertory Theatre has performed works by winning playwrights.
In February, prominent playwright Anne Washburn was announced as the winner of the Hermitage Major Theater Award, which was launched in 2021 with a major gift from philanthropist and Hermitage supporter Flora Major.
Washburn is probably best known for “Mr. Burns, a Post-Electric Play,” which was listed fourth on The New York Times’ list of the 25 Best American Plays Since “Angels in America.”
At an announcement event, Washburn said her proposal to the jury was for “something I’ve been wanting to do for years and years and didn’t quite have the courage to do and didn’t have my confidence to do and wondered if I would ever do.” Not long after she personally committed to pursuing her idea, she was asked to submit a proposal to the Hermitage Major Award. “It’s like this wonderful gift from nowhere,” she said.
The prize also carries a $35,000 commission and a Hermitage residency, and Washburn is promised a developmental workshop in “a major arts capital” expected in late 2027.
Encouraging artists to broaden their work
Jurors for the two prizes have often spoken about wanting to encourage both prominent and emerging artists to expand their range or to have the flexibility to try something new.
Larry Ossei-Mensah, an independent curator and co-founder of Art Noir, was one of the three jurors that selected Weston for the Hermitage Greenfield Prize, which he describes as a “catalytic prize for the artists.”
Ossei-Mensah said jurors look for artists with a practice that grabs them and finding the right moment to help further their careers.
For many past winners, “this prize has come at an inflection point in their practice. They research and try something new,” he said. “For Sanford Biggers, it was really a beginning of his textile work. It’s similar with Charisse. I know her working with glass and working with different materials, and she can expand that language. For me, at least, it’s part of the romance that we helped usher them to the next phase of their careers.”
Biggers, who won the 2010 Greenfield Prize in visual art “encouraged juries to think about who is going to use this opportunity to elevate their craft, to do something they might not otherwise do,” Sandberg said.
A growing impact on the arts world
Since he arrived in 2019, Sandberg has been a whirlwind of activity to expand the reach of the Hermitage programs with artists and the attention and awareness it gets in the Sarasota area and beyond, which, in turn, has helped increase fundraising, to support programs and the future need for additional staff. He succeeded founding executive director Bruce Rodgers, who had led the organization for 15 years.
He’s also an independent writer, producer and director who has written movies for the Hallmark Channel and directed stage shows since he was hired. In March, he was included in a New York Times story about how producers are increasingly turning to London and England to develop new projects because of the lower costs of production there.
Sandberg said he plans to produce a season of five new works that he has been developing for years at the at the Riverside Studios, a 400-seat house in West London, while continuing to oversee the Hermitage.
“I’m a self-professed workaholic. I don’t think that’s a secret to anybody,” he said. “I have a work-work balance, not a work-life balance.”
The Hermitage doesn’t produce its own works, but like other artist retreats, it plays a strong role in the art that is eventually seen, heard and read by audiences internationally. Its fellows, who stay for free on the campus, are asked to take part in two free community programs, such as talks about their new work or careers or performances of new pieces in development. The Hermitages presents these programs on its own beach and at an assortment of partnering organizations, including Selby Gardens, The Ringling, Sarasota Art Museum, the Manatee Performing Arts Center, Booker High School and the Westcoast Black Theatre Troupe.
While area residents see new work in the early stages, the time spent at the Hermitage can lead to major productions and exhibitions. Three recent Broadway plays – Paula Vogel’s “Mother Play,” Doug Wright’s “Good Night, Oscar” and Bess Wohl’s “Liberation,” were begun or at least partially developed during Hermitage residencies.
Pulitzer Prize-winner Martyna Majok, who received the 2018 Hermitage Greenfield Prize, initially intended to create a musical about life for people near the Chernobyl nuclear reactor site. But world events changed her perspective, and she reworked her 2018 play “Queens” into a widely praised new version about immigrant life in the United States that had its premiere last fall at the Manhattan Theatre Club in New York.
Composer Jeanine Tesori worked on major revisions for the musical “Kimberly Akimbo,” which went on to win several Tony Awards, and she worked with playwright George Brant to turn his play “Grounded” into an opera that had its premiere at The Kennedy Center before being presented at the Metropolitan Opera.
Pulitzer Prize-winner Michael R. Jackson, the creator of the musical “A Strange Loop,” first shared parts of his off-Broadway hit “White Girl in Danger” in a presentation at the Hermitage Beach.
Artists can’t apply to spend time at the Hermitage. They are selected by a curatorial council made up of experts (and sometimes past recipients) in various fields. The current council includes playwrights Rajiv Joseph and Lynn Nottage, artist and Hermitage Greenfield winner Sanford Biggers, and award-winning composers Shara Nova and Du Yun.
The winners of the Greenfield and Major prizes are chosen by specially selected jury panels, who bring to their discussion individual lists of potential honorees, four of whom are selected to submit proposals before a final decision is made.
Hermitage Greenfield Prize weekend
Weston will be celebrated during the annual Hermitage Greenfield Prize Weekend, including the April 12 gala dinner at Michael’s on East that will feature a performance by Tony-nominated Broadway performer Will Swenson. (For tickets: 941-475-2098, ext. 2)
Weston will take part in a conversation with Ossei-Mensah at 5 p.m. April 11 at The Ringling’s Historic Asolo Theater. The weekend also includes the first public presentation “Mxx: The Dignity Project,” described as “an immersive play, installation, discussion circle and ‘happening,’” created by 2024 Greenfield Prize winner Deepa Purohit. It will be presented at 7 p.m. April 13 at Asolo Repertory Theatre’s Koski Production Center, 1009 Tallevast Rd., Sarasota. For more information about the weekend events: hermitageartistretreat.org
Learn more at ArtsBeat.org.