By Emma Barhydt
Now that the lights have dimmed in the Bruce Museum’s Vicki Netter Fitzgerald Gallery and the iCreate 2025 artworks have come down, the impression left on the community endures— a season defined by the vision and confidence of young artists. For seventeen years, the Bruce has invited high school students from across Connecticut, New York, and New Jersey to submit their work for this juried exhibition. Each new edition shows how strongly the museum’s mission connects with the community’s belief in cultivating creativity from an early age. This year’s show—on view from June through September— made that relationship especially clear, pairing youthful imagination with professional mentorship and public engagement.
The 2025 exhibition drew hundreds of submissions across painting, drawing, photography, and digital media. Sixty finalists were chosen for their originality, command of technique, and clarity of thought. Together, their works formed a portrait of a generation attentive to identity, memory, and place.
First Place was awarded to Ana Topirceanu, an 11th-grade homeschooled artist, for SelfPortrait, a graphite and pencil drawing that immediately drew viewers in with its composure and precision. A single red flower on the subject’s checkered hat offered the only color in an otherwise tonal composition. Its direct gaze and careful shading revealed both discipline and vulnerability— qualities that resonated throughout the exhibition.
Second Place went to Rainer Kusama-Hinte, an 11th grader from the High School of Art and Design, for A Portrait of Layla, an oil painting of a young woman in a gray scarf and deep red coat. With confident brushwork and subtle lighting, Kusama-Hinte created a portrait that conveyed quiet determination.
Third Place went to Matthew Carrea of Harrison High School for Rolling Meadows, an oil landscape of open fields and layered skies. Its measured brushstrokes and soft palette captured the stillness of rural light and the balance between human presence and nature.
A defining feature of iCreate is that it engages students not only as artists but as collaborators. The Bruce Museum’s six-week high school internship program gives students hands-on experience in curation, exhibition design, and art handling. The interns also select one piece for the Youth@Bruce Award, which this year went to Caitlin Yoon of Northern Valley Regional High School at Demarest for Fragile Sanctuary.
Yoon’s acrylic painting depicted a vivid underwater landscape filled with coral, fish, and parachuting figures descending into the light. The piece was imaginative and meticulous, balancing color and scale with a sense of ecological awareness. Her selection by the interns underscored iCreate’s unique model of peer leadership— a reminder that cultivating future artists begins with giving young people agency in how art is presented and discussed.
Three students earned Honorable Mentions for works that reflected both technical range and emotional clarity. Haily Park, an 11th grader at the Academy of the Holy Angels, was recognized for Woven Moments of Love, an acrylic painting of a mother and child framed by patterned textiles. Aryn Ryu, a 10th grader at Bergen County High School, was honored for Flight Paths, a layered acrylic composition that explored motion and connection through bursts of color and shifting light. Brody Park, a ninth grader at the Academy of the Holy Angels, received recognition for Together in Harmony, a still life in which flowers made from fruits and vegetables conveyed wit and imagination.
As the exhibition closes, its legacy continues. For the students, iCreate 2025 provided a chance to see their work treated with professional respect and shared with a wide audience. For the community, it reaffirmed the role of art in civic life—how creativity builds empathy, curiosity, and appreciation for different ways of seeing.
The Bruce Museum’s commitment to youth arts, supported this year by the CT Department of Economic and Community Development, CT Humanities, the Charles M. and Deborah G. Royce Exhibition Fund, Debbie Simon, Lily deJongh Downing, and David Yudain, continues to strengthen that connection. The museum provides not only exhibition space but mentorship and a framework through which young people learn how art functions in public dialogue.
iCreate 2025 remains a testament to what happens when a community makes room for its youngest artists. Their work is not a glimpse of what’s to come—it is a vital expression of where we are now. In Greenwich, where the arts are woven into the rhythm of civic life, that message feels especially at home.
The Bruce Museum’s iCreate exhibition will return in summer 2026. For more information about youth arts programs and upcoming exhibitions, visit brucemuseum.org
