The Royal Hibernian Academy celebrates the 176th anniversary of the RHA Annual Exhibition with the announcement of 3 additional artist's prizes for photography, sculpture and portraiture. The RHA Annual Exhibition continues to be the most important Irish art event of the year with 550 new artworks and an artists' prize fund now totalling over 60,000 euro. The range of work exhibited adds to the richness of the spectacle: photography, painting, printmaking, sculpture and drawing as well as architectural models are all shown. The exhibition will include 31 works by photographers including Amelia Stein RHA, Ruth McHugh, Mary Kelly, Abigail O'Brien, Amy O'Riordan, Simon Burch, Michael Durand, Ana Rackard, Deirdre A. Power and David Farrell. The artists' prize fund of 60,000 euro now includes a new award for photography of 5,000 euro - The Curtin O'Donoghue Photography Prize donated by Donal Curtin and Anne O'Donoghue. Among the other 19 awards are The Hennessy Craig Scholarship of €12,000 for a young painter under the age of 35 years, the Axa Insurance Drawing prize of 5,000 euro and two inaugural awards: The inaugural Ireland- US Council for Commerce and Industry Inc. Portrait Prize of 5,000 euro. The RHA Sculpture prize of 10,000 euro The exhibition includes new artwork by RHA Academicians, by 30 invited artists and work rigorously selected from over 2,500 artworks from the open submission process. Artists will include Richard Gorman RHA, Liam Belton RHA, Michael Quane RHA, Brian Bourke HRHA, Barrie Cooke HRHA and Louis le Brocquy HRHA. Invited artists this year include Séan Hillen, Chung Eun Mo, John Coll, Brian King, Sahoko Blake, Patrick O'Reilly, Caroline Donohue and Cathy Carman. A full colour catalogue accompanies the exhibition. For more information on the exhibition or to request media images please contact RHA Marketing officer Elaine Fallon at + 353 1 6612558 ext 111, e mail elaine@rhagallery.ie