Photo by Dan Macy

The Washington Post broke its mini-cold streak with a Pulitzer Prize today for art critic Philip Kennicott. The award is the Post’s first since 2011, when it won for breaking news photography, and first for any staff writers since 2010, when the Post collected a slew of awards.

Kennicott, the Pulitzer Committee said, won “for his eloquent and passionate essays on art and the social forces that underlie it.” Among the articles cited in the $10,000 award are a July essay on the future of the Corcoran Gallery of Art, a November story on the viral nature of an election-night photo from President Obama’s re-election campaign, and a May review of a National Building Museum exhibit.

The Post was also a finalist for the prestigious Public Service prize for a series on faulty evidence in federal criminal cases that was never disclosed to defendant. The reporting prompted a review of more than 20,000 cases. (The Sun-Sentinel, of Fort Lauderdale, Fla., won.) The Post was also short-listed in National Reporting for its series on the increased use of unmanned drones in warfare. Eli Saslow was a finalist in Feature Writing for his October profile of a hard-luck swimming pool salesman from Manassas, Va.; while editorial board member Jackson Diehl was nominated for his editorials about the civil war in Syria.