And the Winner is...

Marie Leduc

Aug 18, 2023

For the past year, I have been researching art awards and prizes as a way to better understand how different Art World activities contribute to making contemporary art. This post considers a few of the most notable contemporary art awards, how they are administered, and how they impact contemporary artists and the sponsors who fund them.

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As a child I loved horses and could draw a prancing pony from memory. My classmates admired these drawings and called me the “best” artist in the class. This acknowledgment gave me a warm feeling of pride. My “best” artist status was further solidified when the principal awarded me the prize in the logo design contest at our small Catholic elementary school. Soon all of the students were sporting a new crest on their uniforms with a logo designed by me. I can’t remember what the prize was for this achievement, only that from that moment on I believed I could be an artist.

For artists, awards are much more than the prize. Like an exhibition, an award is a public declaration that the individual who made the artwork is an artist. The award also acknowledges the singularity of the artist and their work. By choosing one artist from many, an award recognizes the exceptional nature of the artist’s production and skill. And, as such, an award is a public affirmation of an artist’s status and place in the hierarchy of the Art World. Artists who win awards are understood to be the “best.”

Awards also have a very personal effect on an artist as my grade-school experience suggests. It provides the artist with that “warm” feeling of self-worth. The award is an affirmation that what they make is appreciated and that the world sees them as an artist. It is this feeling that encourages an artist to continue a pursuit that is a vocation rather than a career. In a career we work for our salary, but in the strange “inverted economy”1 of the Art World, this configuration is reversed. As sociologist Nathalie Heinich notes, “remuneration” for artists “serves to carry out the activity rather than the activity serving to produce remuneration.”2 A vocation is taken up for the sake of the activity rather than the profit it might bring. Awards that come with cash prizes, however, are very useful to an artist. They have the double effect of affirming the artist’s practice and public acceptance as well as providing an economic boost. The prize, depending on the cash amount, may free an artist from selling their labour elsewhere to support their work, or allow them to complete a large and expensive project, or to prepare for a major exhibition – all of which, in the end, contributes to affirming the artist’s belief that their vocation is worthwhile and valued by others.

Finally, awards help to build and increase an artist’s symbolic and social capital. The public nature of awards, which are often accompanied by significant media attention, introduce the artist not only to the public but, more importantly, to Art World agents who have the power to give the artist even more recognition through future exhibitions. Awards, like exhibitions, are then powerful forms of social capital that add significant symbolic value to both the artist and their work.

The Prizes

Winning a prize in grade school is, of course, no comparison to the prestigious prizes that are offered in the Art World. The Art World is actually awash in prizes, not just blue ribbons and trophies but large monetary awards that are announced with much fanfare in the international media. In 2019, for example, ArtNews counted 21 contemporary art awards worth $100,000 or more. The largest of these was the Nomura Art Award worth $1,000,000 USD and touted as the “largest cash award in contemporary visual arts.” Funded by one of Japan’s wealthiest corporations, Nomura Holdings, Inc., the award was given to contemporary artist, Doris Salcedo of Columbia. Salcedo was already well-known internationally and, one could say, provided Nomura with more name recognition than the other way around. After the media blitz died down, the promised annual award never appeared again.

Not all awards have such grand cash prizes or fizzle out so quickly. The Turner Prize is one of the best known and oldest prizes dedicated to contemporary art and is only worth £40,000.3 The Turner is often cited as the inspiration for other contemporary art awards, like Canada’s Sobey Art Award. The Turner was founded in 1984, at a time when Britain was hardly regarded as a major art centre. Given out annually to a British artist, the award was designed to “encourage wider interest in contemporary art and assist [the] Tate in acquiring new works.” The Turner went on to gain notoriety in Britain and abroad by nominating and awarding the prize to controversial artists such as Damien Hirst ( winner 1995) (of the “shark in a tank” fame), Tracey Emin (shortlisted 1999) (for pitching a tent in the gallery containing ephemera from her past sexual relationships), and Rachel Whiteread (winner 1993) (a sculptor noted for casting the inside of a whole house). Today, the Tate Museum counts as one of the top contemporary art venues in the Euro-American art world, and London has gained a reputation as a place where innovative contemporary art is made and can be seen.4

Inspired by the success of the Turner, other countries followed Britain’s lead and established a “national” contemporary art award.5 France has the annual Prix Marcel Duchamp founded in 2000. It was designed “to highlight the creative abundance of the French scene at the beginning of the 21st century and to support artists in their international career.” The United States has the Bucksbaum Award worth $100,000 given out every two years to an artist who participates in the Whitney Biennial which is held in New York at the Whitney Museum of American Art. Also, established in 2000, the award was designed to recognize an American artist “whose work demonstrates a singular combination of talent and imagination” and who the jurors believe has “the potential to make a lasting impact on the history of American art.” Similarly, Canada added its Sobey Art Award a few years later in 2002. It is also now valued at $100,000. Funded by the Sobey Art Foundation in partnership with the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa, it was established to advance “public engagement with contemporary Canadian art, both at home and around the world.”

The mission of each of these “national” awards has been to make contemporary art and artists more visible within their respective countries, and to give these same artists greater presence in the international world of contemporary art. The awards highlight, for the public, the national significance of contemporary art — especially when an important national museum is involved — and through Art World publicity the award celebrates this national “brand” to the international centres of contemporary art. For the donors and the museums then, the awards are an investment not only in the artists and their work, but also in a national brand of contemporary art. How well this art actually represents a distinct “national” character is questionable, especially in an Art World where French, Canadian, British, and American identities do not carry any distinct value. Instead, the value of the investment lies in the attention the award brings to the nominated and winning artists and demonstrates their comparable value in the competitive field of international contemporary art.

Other awards, like the Nomura, look beyond national territories and select artists from anywhere in the world. Sometimes, like the Nomura, these awards are solely sponsored by a corporation. The Absolut Art Award is a good example. Absolut began working with famous contemporary artists as early as 1985 when the company commissioned Andy Warhol to design a label for their vodka bottle. Over the years the company continued to commission product artwork and media images from well-known artists and advertised extensively in art journals like ArtForum. In 2009, they introduced the Art Award worth €100,000 and continued to award the prize until 2017.

While corporate-sponsored awards are ostensibly meant to benefit the artist, it is difficult to see them as much more than corporate promotion. The award, especially when it is extraordinarily large like the Nomura, brings the corporation plenty of free press. Nomura, for example, rolled out the news of its award over a six-month period in 2019.6 In that time, the award and the company were featured as news items every few months in the international media and in numerous art magazines where they would have otherwise had to pay for advertising. The winners of these corporate awards are also often very famous, like Salcedo, or have already gained significant international media attention. In 2017, for example, the Absolut Award was given to German artist, Anne Imhof. That same summer she represented Germany at the Venice Biennale and won the Golden Lion award for her lengthy performance/installation work, Faust. Selecting an artist like Imhof or Salcedo, much like sponsoring a top athlete, allows a corporation to piggy-back on the extraordinary value of the artist to promote their product.

Perhaps to downplay the commercial aspect of award sponsorship and give an award more credibility, corporations often partner with important art institutions. The Hugo Boss Prize, another well-known international award, was sponsored by the German fashion house HUGO BOSS. The award was founded in 1996 in conjunction with the Guggenheim Museum in New York. The award was given out every two years until the last award in 2020. While active, the award was worth $100,000 USD and the winning artist was given a solo exhibition at the Guggenheim. The award “honored outstanding achievement in contemporary art, celebrating the work of remarkable artists whose practices are among the most innovative and influential of our time.” Some of the winners have included Matthew Barney (1996), Rirkrit Tiravanija (2004), and Simone Leigh (2018) who represented the United States at the 2022 Venice Biennale. At the time of winning, each of these artists had already gained a significant international presence. The award affirmed the artists’ prestige but also confirmed the Guggenheim’s role as a powerful consecrating institution. HUGO BOSS, in the meantime, earned social credit for their association with significant artists and a very powerful art institution.

Other international awards are supported solely by charitable foundations which in turn are funded by wealthy families or corporations. These awards tend to be less about the business ventures of the donors and more about promoting certain political or social values. The MacArthur Fellowship, or the so-called “Genius Award,” is funded by the MacArthur family foundation with the aim of nurturing creativity in a number of fields, including contemporary art. Once a year, they award multiple prizes of $800,000 to “extraordinarily talented and creative individuals as an investment in their potential.” Last year, Paul Chan (who won the Hugo Boss Award in 2014) was the recipient of this generous no-strings attached award. The recipients are not required to report on how they spend their winnings, and once the awards have been announced there is usually no further media attention.

Another art prize is Japan’s Praemium Imperiale. This award appears to be modelled on the Nobel Prize. The award was established in 1988 to “realize the wish of the late Prince Takamatsu “to contribute to enhancing and promoting the cultures and arts of the world.” The award announcements are made at state-like dinners held in Japan and in other world capitals and attended by international political representatives. Administered by the Japan Art Association and funded by major Japanese corporations, the award is given every year to five artists: one each in the categories of painting, sculpture, architecture, music, and theatre/film. Again, famous artists are often selected. In 2022, Ai Weiwei, already a contemporary art superstar, received the ¥15,000,000 (about $100,000 USD) prize for sculpture while Italian artist, Giulio Paolini, won the painting award.

A Little History

All of these awards, no matter who the sponsor or their motives, contribute to affirming artists and art in the world of contemporary art. Before the avant-garde art movement, this sort of affirmation in Britain and France was provided by the nation’s respective Academies.7 The Academy consisted of “master” artists and their role was to teach appropriate artistic skills to future artists, hold juried art exhibitions, award prizes, and choose and initiate new artists (peers) into the Academy. Judgements of worthiness were based on an assessment of an artist’s technical skills and their creative rendering of appropriate subjects in sculpture and painting. There was little room for bold experiments in either the use of material or in the subject matter represented. The avant-garde movement in the mid-nineteenth century, however, with its bold challenges to artistic practice and introduction of new subjects, saw the decline of the Academy as the primary arbiter of art. Often denied a place in the Academy, avant-garde artists began to set up their own exhibitions and purposely eliminated juries and prizes. This effectively left the vetting of artists in disarray and allowed art dealers, critics, and collectors to step into the void. As art historian, Sophic Cras notes,

with the withdrawal of the Academy, private agencies swiftly appropriated the privilege of awarding prizes. The capacity of each one to impose its own reflected the power play existing between the people involved, competing with one another to impose themselves as prescriptors in a field where the judgment criteria were no longer stable or shared.8

Thus, instead of a single institution such as the Academy to affirm art and artists, awards and exhibitions administered by “intermediaries”9 began to take precedence. This approach, which is more ad hoc than the Academy system, relies on Art World professionals such as curators, art historians, museum directors, art dealers, and collectors to be the arbiters of what is art and who is an artist.

The juries appointed to select the winners of the prizes discussed here are good examples of how art professionals are now the primary arbiters of contemporary art. All of the juries (except for the Praemium Imperiale which does not rely on art professionals)10 are composed of individuals involved in the exhibiting or selling of art. None of the juries include artists. The Nomura Award jury, for example, was chaired by curator Kathy Halbreich, the executive director of the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation and included the noted independent curator, Okwui Enwezor along with

Yuko Hasegawa, the artistic director of Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo; Doryun Chong, the deputy director and chief curator of the forthcoming M+ museum in Hong Kong; and Allan Schwartzman of Sotheby’s.11

The Turner Prize has a similar roster. In 2022, the panel was co-chaired by Alex Farquharson, Director, Tate Britain and Helen Legg, Director, Tate Liverpool and included:

Irene Aristizábal, Head of Curatorial and Public Practice, BALTIC; Christine Eyene, Research Fellow, School of Arts and Media, UCLan; Robert Leckie, Director, Spike Island; and, Anthony Spira, Director, MK Gallery.12

All of these individuals, named along with their position titles, provide the award with a certain Art World credibility, especially when a corporation unrelated to the Art World is providing the prize. The naming of professional titles also indicates how the jury members, like the principal and teachers at my grade school, have the authority to bestow recognition. It is these individuals who are now the “masters” of the Academy.

In many cases, these same professionals are also deeply involved in the economic exchange of artworks. Museum directors and curators make decisions about collection purchases, gallerists and auction houses sell artworks, and collectors buy art. The Prix Marcel Duchamp is an especially salient example of this intimate relationship between the contemporary art market and the professionals that sit on prize juries. The Prix Marcel Duchamp was founded by art dealer/collector Gilles Fuchs as a way to improve the status of French contemporary art in the national and international art market. He formed a non-profit association, ADIAF (Association for the International Diffusion of French Art), with other collectors and they pooled their resources to fund the award. They then partnered with the premiere national art museum in France, the Centre Georges Pompidou. The jury for each iteration of the Prix has been composed of association members, all of them collectors who purchase art for themselves or for public museums. Since its inception, then, the Prix Marcel Duchamp has benefited many individual artists, brought French art greater recognition, and through these activities also improved the value of numerous art collections.

The relationship between sponsors, museums, and artists in the award-giving process indicates how closely all of these parties are intertwined with the different forms of capital that contribute to the making of contemporary art. By taking part in this affirming process each party benefits from the symbolic, social, and economic capital that such activities generate. The corporate sponsor gains notoriety and a reputation for being edgy and contemporary (Absolut Vodka, for example), a museum increases its reputation as an authority and mecca of contemporary art (the Tate), private donors and foundations gain recognition for their causes, and collectors increase the value of their art. All of these activities turn around the artist who makes the work and, in the end, gains the attention of those who have the authority and power to make their objects art.

Making & Meaning

And the Winner is...

Marie Leduc

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