What does winning an arts prize really mean? – The Art Newspaper

Previous to the launch of the Turner Prize in 1984, the Tate had, based on Frances Morris, “languished on the sidelines of the modern scene for years”. The previous director and curator of Tate Trendy recollects how the award introduced with it a right away public profile, full with heated vital debates and reside tv broadcasts that targeted public consideration on modern artwork and the museum itself. “The Turner Prize was a honey pot which attracted a rising youthful viewers and helped construct a useful community of youthful patrons,” she says. The Turner Prize is now 40 editions outdated and its draw has maybe lessened just a little.

However the art-prize system goes again a minimum of a century: J.F. Archibald established a prize for portrait portray in Sydney in 1921. Earlier nonetheless, medals had been handed out at salons in Paris from 1849 onwards. Then, as now, recognition was an essential consequence for the profitable artists, at finest resulting in acquisitions and exhibitions.

For a lot of younger artists, the moment money is fairly helpful, too; Samuel Ross, the British trend and product designer and artist, gained the CHF100,000 ($124,000) Hublot Design Prize in 2019, given to an impressive rising designer (the prize was final awarded in 2023). He spent it organising his personal unbiased firm.

However winners beware: in some territories, together with the UK and the US, if an artist has a lot as despatched in a jpg, and due to this fact utilized to enter, tax may very well be payable on any winnings.

With many prizes run by luxurious homes and main establishments, they definitely signify an ideal synthesis of promoting and philanthropy. However what actually issues is what they do for artists themselves. We have a look.

John Moores Portray Prize

£25,000 awarded biannually to a UK-based artist working in a painted medium. Previous winners embrace Graham Crowley (2023), Peter Doig (1993) and David Hockney (1967).

A profitable businessman, and at one time among the many richest males in England, John Moores struggled to search out an viewers for his personal work. Pissed off, and believing his wealth counted towards him being seen as an artist, he arrange an artwork prize—and made its submissions course of nameless. Practically 70 years on, the prize has grow to be a barometer for altering tastes in portray and has been identified to supercharge careers.

This was definitely the case for Rose Wylie, who gained the prize in 2014 on the age of 80 (one among six girls to obtain the award). Inside three years she had been made an OBE and joined the big-time gallery, David Zwirner. Subsequent February she is going to grow to be solely the second British lady to have a significant solo exhibition in the principle galleries of the Royal Academy of Arts after Elisabeth Frink.

Loewe Basis Craft Prize

€50,000 awarded yearly to a global maker. Previous winners embrace the ceramist Kunimasa Aoki (2025), the textile artist Fanglu Lin (2021) and the ceramist Jennifer Lee (2018).

The sunshine of Loewe’s much-celebrated outgoing director Jonathan Anderson shone brightly on the Loewe Basis Craft Prize till his departure for Dior earlier this yr. Now its management is firmly within the fingers of the muse’s chief government, Sheila Loewe. In 2025 she oversaw—as is the prize’s custom—a glamorous ceremony, this time in Madrid.The movie director Pedro Almodóvar delivered the Alex Brogden-designed silver trophy. Kunimasa Aoki’s work, created by compressing many skinny coils of clay, one among 4,600 entries, was chosen because the winner from 30 finalists. “In international locations like Korea and Japan, they inform me that they as soon as dreamt of getting a bit in a museum just like the V&A,” Loewe informed The Occasions earlier this yr. “Now they dream of being a part of the Loewe Basis Craft Prize.”

Turner Prize

£25,000 awarded yearly to 1 artist born in or working primarily in Britain. Previous winners embrace Jasleen Kaur (2024), Jeremy Deller (2004) and Steve McQueen (1999).

Though not essentially the most financially beneficial, the Turner Prize remains to be thought of essentially the most influential award for UK artists. With the prize’s reputation, so too comes controversy. Throughout her 2016 acceptance speech, Helen Marten memorably informed an viewers: “Everybody on this room is working on this world that’s so fucking privileged… I actually hope [this] gained’t change my life.” In the meantime, Frances Morris recollects the handwritten postcard—in capital letters in black and crimson pencil—that she obtained from Richard Lengthy, declining to just accept his prize in individual in 1989. “He most popular, in his phrases, to ‘go on an extended stroll’,” she remembers.

MacArthur Basis Fellowship

$800,000 per individual awarded yearly to artists,scientists, academics, and extra. Final yr’s recipients included Tony Cokes, Ebony G. Patterson and Wendy Crimson Star.

When the photographer LaToya Ruby Frazier grew to become one among 24 recipients of the 2015 MacArthur Basis Fellowship, she mirrored: “After I realised I didn’t have any financial energy, the one factor I knew to depend on was to doc what was occurring.”

Few awards may very well be mentioned to change this place just like the so-called ‘genius grant’. Not solely is the prize among the many largest on the earth, it’s a famously no-strings-attached association. MacArthur fellows are free to create as they see match, with out expectation or analysis. The cash is paid in instalments over 5 years.

Prix Marcel Duchamp

A €90,000 prize awarded yearly to 1 visible artist of French nationality or residence. Previous winners embrace Gaëlle Choisne (2024), Cyprien Gaillard (2010) and Tatiana Trouvé (2007).

The most important artwork prize in France additionally offers its winners and shortlisted artists a three-month exhibition on the Centre Pompidou—or, whereas the house is closed for the following 4 years, on the Musée d’Artwork Moderne de Paris. As such, it’s maybe unsurprising that the judging course of is a prolonged affair, one thing that’s required by its founders, the Affiliation for the Worldwide Diffusion of French Artwork (ADIAF).

A committee recommends a choice of artists who’re eligible for the award, then ADIAF members will conduct almost 60 studio visits. As soon as the record is right down to the ultimate 4, every artist is represented to a jury by a rapporteur—comparable to a curator, artistic director or artwork historian—chosen by the artist. Lastly, a nine-person jury decides the winner. Nail-biting certainly.

LG Guggenheim Award

$100,000 awarded yearly to a global artist working in technology-based artwork. Previous winners embrace: Ayoung Kim (2025), Shu Lea Cheang (2024) and Stephanie Dinkins (2023).

Launched in 2022, it’s a brand new child on the block, and its worth is related to the expensive nature of the applied sciences on which it focuses. As Noam Segal, a three-time juror and the LG Electronics affiliate curator on the Guggenheim factors out, “none of us has the means to discover the vector house of AI in the best way we might discover the interior mechanics of a digital digicam”.

One in every of a rising variety of prizes created in partnership with a widely known model, Segal sees this collaboration as a significant a part of an artwork ecosystem that’s usually missing in help and public funding. “To me, it’s a lifeblood of the artwork system,” she says.

Deutsche Börse Pictures Basis Prize

£30,000 awarded yearly to an artist who has contributed to images through a e book or exhibition in Europe within the previous yr. Previous winners embrace Lindokuhle Sobekwa (2025) and Adam Broomberg & Oliver Chanarin (2013).

Awards devoted to 1 medium can wrestle to chop via the noise, however not the Deutsche Börse Pictures Basis Prize which, for its dimension, packs outsized affect and notoriety.

By nominating picture makers primarily based on tasks they’ve printed or exhibited solely in the course of the earlier yr, it has created a fast-track technique to choosing winners who’re having fun with pivotal profession moments. Absolutely solely on this prize do you see Arthur Jafa dropping to Samuel Fosso (2023) or Sophie Calle to Dana Lixenburg (2017).

Chanel Subsequent Prize

€100,00 prize per winner awarded biannually to 10 worldwide modern artists. Previous winners embrace Tolia Astakhishvili (2024) and Treasured Okoyoman (2021).

Based in 2021 and judged most just lately by the actor Tilda Swinton, the artist Cao Fei and the curator Hans Ulrich Obrist, this newcomer award is spendy and star-studded. Its sizable winnings are meant to help every artist in realising their most bold work—2024 winner Dalton Paula deliberate to make use of her €100,000 to assemble a forest college—however additionally it is the mentorship (the Royal School of Artwork has participated) and partnership alternatives (Mubi) that make it fascinating.

“Right here we’ve got the thought of the longue durée,” Obrist explains. “That is an instance of one thing which isn’t only a one-off factor, however is an extended durational concept that’s essential in a world of short-termism.”

Praemium Imperiale

£77,000 awarded yearly to 1 worldwide practitioner in every of 5 classes: portray, sculpture, structure, music and theatre/movie. This yr’s winners: Peter Doig, Marina Abramović, Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker, András Schiff and Eduardo Souto de Moura.

Given yearly since 1989 below the patronage of Japan’s Imperial Home, the total record of Praemium Imperiale winners reads like a who’s who of the artwork world’s most recognisable names. David Hockney and Willem de Kooning shared the inaugural award for portray, Richard Attenborough gained the movie/theatre class in 1998 and Zaha Hadid claimed the structure prize in 2009. It’s thought of to be the artwork world’s reply to the Nobel Prize.

However regardless of the celebrity of its winners—and its advisers, who embrace Hillary Clinton—it’s not a Nobel rival. “We will see that yearly a author, for instance, via the Nobel Prize, has visibility far past the sphere of literature,” Obrist says. “I’ve at all times puzzled when this might exist additionally for the visible arts, so extra international recognition for an artist would occur yearly as properly.”

Dorothy & Lillian Gish Prize

$450,000 prize awarded yearly to a global artist. Previous winners embrace Thelma Golden (2025), Laurie Anderson (2007) and Frank Gehry (1994).

When Thelma Golden, the director and chief curator of Harlem’s Studio Museum, grew to become the primary institutional chief to win the prize in 2024, she informed The New York Occasions, “I’m normally on the opposite facet of this, somebody who nominates artists for awards.” Nonetheless, in profitable the prize, which was based in 1994 and is run by JPMorgan Chase Financial institution, Golden joined Nobel Prize winner Bob Dylan and Vicky Holt Takamine, a grasp hula instructor and native Hawaiian rights activist, on the record of esteemed awardees.

Sobey Artwork Award

C$100,000 awarded yearly to a Canadian citizen or resident. Previous winners embrace Nico Williams (2024), Laakkuluk Williamson Bathory (2021) and Jeremy Shaw (2016).

Canada’s most precious artwork prize takes an attention-grabbing strategy to broadening the scope of its winners. Annually the jury consists of 1 consultant from every of Canada’s six areas. They create a listing of 5 artists from every area, after which a shortlist of six, with one finalist from every. 5 obtain C$25,000 every, with the winner getting C$100,000. In 2024, 4 out of the Sobey Awards’ six finalists had been Indigenous Canadians, as was the prize’s winner, Nico Williams, who is thought for his sculptural beadwork. “I need to ship out the identical message to all of the bush children on the market,” he informed Artforum. “We’re doing it!”

Artes Mundi

£40,000 is awarded biannually to a global artist. Winners embrace Taloi Havini (2024) and Apichatpong Weerasethakul (2019).

In 2015, the winner Theaster Gates determined to separate his £40,000 prize among the many different eight shortlisted candidates after listening to different nominees focus on the significance and benefit of artwork prizes, and what the cash ought to be used for. He’s regarded as the primary artist to have made the revolutionary transfer. Artes Mundi was then break up once more in 2021, this time on the behest of judges and in recognition of the impression of the pandemic. The newest winner, Taloi Havini, informed The Guardian: “Artists don’t do it for the cash, they do it for different issues, nevertheless it allows an artist to maintain going.”

Future Era Artwork Prize

$60,000 money prize, plus a $40,000 funding in apply awarded biannually to an artist aged 35 and below. Previous winners embrace Ashfika Rahman (2024), Emilija Škarnulytė (2019) and Lynette Yiadom-Boakye (2012).

Run by Björn Geldhof, the artistic director at award organiser PinchukArtCentre in Kyiv, the prize is free to enter, with no trade advice or invite wanted. However it’s jury is high notch, most just lately together with Cecilia Alemani, the curator of the Venice Biennale in 2022, and Alicia Knock, a curator on the Centre Pompidou. “Each software actually will get reviewed,” Geldhof tells The Artwork Newspaper.

“So typically an artist isn’t shortlisted however hears from a jury member who says ‘I noticed your work. We need to work with you.’” It’s this breadth of alternative that actually units the prize aside—its 21-strong shortlist, 5 of whom obtain $20,000, is definitely the most important of any main award. This, Geldhof explains, makes it simpler for the jury to take dangers and mix recognisable and unknown artists. “It uplifts them,” he says, “in a really, superb approach.”