Sylvia Benitez is a nationally awarded artist; the recipient of many awards from numerous granting foundations, including an Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundation Individual Support Grant, two Pollock-Krasner Foundation Awards, an AICA Award (Association of International Critics of Art for best exterior sculpture installation, Puerto Rico, 1997), two National Endowment for the Arts Visiting Artist Fellowships, a Puffin Foundation Award, an Empire State Craft Award, two Sculpture Space Residencies, and two MacDowell Colony Fellowships. Benitez also has also received artist residencies from Yaddo, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Ucross Foundation, and the Vermont Studio Center.
Her installations and creative works have been shown in numerous museums, sculpture parks, galleries and group exhibitions throughout the USA including the Whitney Museum of American Art at Champion, Wave Hill, Socrates Sculpture Park, the Neuberger Museum of Art, the Baltimore Museum of Art, the American Craft Museum, the McNay Museum of Art, Art Omi, Johns Hopkins University, the El Paso Museum of Art, the Islip Museum, the Abington Art Center, Texas State University Mitte Gallery, the Schuylkill Environmental Center, the Delaware Center for Contemporary Arts, Franklin Furnace, the Beeville Museum, Texas Tech Museum, and el Museo De Historia, Anthropologia y Arte, Puerto Rico.
Her work has been represented by many galleries over the years: the C. Grimaldis Gallery, the Austin Street Gallery, Gallery Nord, the Bill Lowe Gallery, and Slate Gray Gallery. Her work is currently represented by the Fringe Gallery, the Hunt Gallery, and the Wally Workman Gallery.
Benitez is the founder and president of The Gentileschi Aegis Gallery Association (GAGA), a 501(c)(3) nonprofit founded in 2010, serving women artists of south Texas. The organization has an active membership of sixty members and has served over 300 women artists since its inception. She has curated, installed, and marketed over 30 thematic GAGA exhibitions, many being all-member inclusive.