Manchester’s Whitworth Museum has been awarded the UK’s annual “Museum of the Year” award, recognizing the institution’s impressive new expansion project, unveiled this past February. (more…)
The Shortlist for the 2015 Turner Prize has been announced, featuring a diverse body of artists and practices that diverges wildly from last year’s heavily video and film-centric affair. The 2015 Prize exhibition will be staged this year at the Tramway arts venue in Glasgow. The Turner Prize, a £25,000 award, is Britain’s most prominent recognition in the arts, and this year will go to either London artist Bonnie Camplin, German-born artist Nicole Wermers, London-based arts collective Assemble (which adopted an abandoned housing estate and converted it into a new community space), or artist Janice Kerbel. Working in a wide variety of media, social practice and community milieu factor heavily into the pieces on view this year.
The Turner Prize exhibition will open this October in Glasgow. (more…)
The WSJ has an interview with Jeff Koons at the artist’s studio this week, which sees Koons revealing that his balloon animal sculptures were in part a way to communicate with his son, who left for Italy with the artist’s former wife, Ilona Staller, after their divorce. “It was a way to be communicating with my son,” Koons says. “I was thinking of him.” (more…)
Tania Brugera is one of the 2015 Herb Alpert Award recipients this year, but is unable to attend the awards ceremony, due to the revocation of her passport by the Cuban government. “The Alpert Award could not come at a better moment,” the artist wrote in a statement to the organization. “The Cuban government does not like my artworks because I’m proposing that our relationship with politics is one where the script is not written for us, but is something we create with responsibility and honesty out of the desire to engage in our political destiny.” (more…)
The Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at this year’s Venice Biennale will go to Ghanian artist El Anatsui. “The Golden Lion Award acknowledges not just his recent successes internationally, but also his artistic influence amongst two generations of artists working in West Africa,” says Biennale Director Paolo Baratta. “It is also an acknowledgment of the sustained, crucial work he has done as an artist, mentor and teacher for the past forty-five years.” (more…)
The Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas has announced a major new art prize, to be awarded to “a living artist in recognition of a significant body of work that has had an extraordinary impact on the understanding of the art form.” The winner receives a $100,000 prize, and will be selected by an impressive jury that includes Phyllida Barlow, Okwui Enwezor, and Nicholas Serota, among others. (more…)
Norway’s Edvard Munch Museum is set to return its annual Edvard Munch prize, following a partnership with partnership with oil and gas corp Statoil. The award carries a $66,000 purse, and an exhibition at the museum. “It is very important not to focus too much on Europe and the US when looking for candidates,” says director Stein Olav Henrichsen, who is focusing internationally for both his panel of judges and potential recipients. (more…)
The 2015 edition of the Kurt Schwitters Award, which comes with a $28,000 prize an an exhibition in the Sprengel Museum Hannover, has been awarded to Pierre Huyghe. (more…)
MoMA has announced the winner of its yearly Young Architects Program design contest, a “party artifact” titled COSMO and designed by Spanish architect Andrés Jaque. “This year’s proposal takes one of the Young Architects Program’s essential requirements–providing a water feature for leisure and fun–and highlights water itself as a scarce resource,” said Pedro Gadanho, Curator in MoMA’s Department of Architecture and Design. “Relying on off-the-shelf components from agro-industrial origin, an exuberant mobile architecture celebrates water-purification processes and turns their intricate visualization into an unusual backdrop for the Warm Up sessions.” (more…)
The Association for the International Diffusion of French Art has announced the nominees for the 2015 edition of the Marcel Duchamp Prize: Davide Balula, Neil Beloufa, Melik Ohanian, and Zineb Sedira. The prize honors one French artist or artist living in France working in the plastic or visual arts. (more…)
New York Magazine columnist Jerry Saltz is the first art critic to receive a National Magazine Award for a Column, following the announcement of the American Society of Magazine Editors’s annual awards. (more…)
Artist Paul Chan has been awarded the 2014 Hugo Boss Prize, the biennial award given by the Guggenheim Museum which carries a $100,000 prize as well as an exhibition at the museum. “Paul’s protean ability to work across multiple platforms from his videos to his more elegiac light pieces and community-based performances is what particularly stood out,” Nancy Spector, the Guggenheim’s deputy director and chief curator told the New York Times. (more…)
The winners of the sixth annual ArtPrize in Grand Rapids, Michigan has been announced, with artist Anila Quayyum Agha taking home the $200,000 first prize for her piece Intersections. The artist was also one of the selections for the Juried Prize, a a first for the event. (more…)
The Turner Prize shortlist has been announced with four artists – Duncan Campbell, Ciara Phillips, James Richards and Tris Vonna-Michell – competing for the £25,000 prize. The shortlist is notable this year for its strong focus on installation and new media-based works. “This reflects the mobility of art today, while the prominence of film, performance, and participation reveals an interest in work that adapts according to changing surroundings.” says jury chair and Tate Britain director Penelope Curtis. (more…)
Camille Henrot, recipient of last year’s Silver Lion in Venice, has been awarded the 2014 Nam June Paik prize. The artist was selected from the shortlist exhibition at the Kunstmuseen Krefeld, and will receive a $32,o00 prize. (more…)
Artist James Turrell is among the group of recipients for the National Medal of Arts this week, alongside Linda Ronstadt, dancer-choreographer Bill T. Jones, author Maxine Hong Kingston, and Broadway composer John Kander. The group will be presented with the award by President Barack Obama. (more…)
Partnering with Beijing’s Tsinghua University Art and Science Media Laboratory (TASML) and the Center for Art and Technology at CCIA (CAT/CCIA), Rhizome has announced a $10,000 cash prize to one Internet artist. The award will be handed out annually three times total over the course of the next three years, through 2016. “Internet art remains less recognized, less supported,” the organization said in a statement. “This prize gives a boost to those who continue to make art on the Internet, and emphasizes the unique cultural importance of such work.” (more…)
The Swiss Art Awards have kicked off the proceedings around Art Basel this week, as eight artists, one architectural collective, and one curator have received the prize’s $27,765 award. Winners include: BITNIK (Carmen Weisskopf and Domagoji Smolji), Vancessa Billy, Kim Seob Boninsegni, Claudia Comte, Emilie Ding, Andreas Hochuli, Emanuel Rossetti, Jules Spinatsch, CKÖ (Daniel Lütolf and Sarah Widmer), and Emilie Bujès. (more…)
Artist Mélanie Matranga has been awarded the first annual Frieze Artist Award, a new prize that welcomes emerging artists to create an ambitious work for the Frieze London fair. Matranga’s work will feature a set of videos “that follow a young artistic couple as they negotiate ‘freedom, success and the proper functioning of a couple.’ The episodes will be filmed during the construction of Frieze London in Regent’s Park, including a purpose-built café, which Matranga has designed for use by visitors.” (more…)
Hiroshi Sugimoto has been awarded the inaugural Isamu Noguchi prize for his work as an artist. The photographer and architect was awarded the prize in an award ceremony at the Noguchi Museum in New York by Japanese Ambassador to the United Nations Motohide Yoshikawa. (more…)
The shortlist for the 2014 Turner Prize will be announced on May 7th at the Tate Britain. The award, given annually to an artist born or working in Britain with an exceptionally outstanding exhibition in the past year, includes a £25,000 prize. All of the shortlist nominees will be invited to show their work at the Turner Prize exhibition later this year. (more…)
Richard Serra has been awarded the President’s Medal from the Architectural League of New York, the first time a non-architect has been given the award. “In presenting this award, the League honors Richard Serra for contributions his work makes to the way we think about space, viewer and object, site, and materiality, concerns relevant to both architects and the artist,” the organization said in a statement. (more…)
The shortlist for the BP Portrait Award has been announced, featuring works by Thomas Ganter, Richard Twose, and David Jon Kassman. The nominees will be on view at London’s National Portrait Gallery from June 26th to September 21st, with the winner announced just before the exhibition opens on June 24th. (more…)
