Art Basel Awards 2025: a game-changing prize

The contemporary art world may finally have its very own Palme d’Or. With the launch of the Art Basel Awards, the world-famous art fair has inaugurated a new, fairer and more collaborative format, already acclaimed by industry players.

An awards ceremony without competition, but with vision

Founded in 1970, Art Basel has until now been a major market event, but without any real awards. Now, with the first edition of the Art Basel Awards, the event aims to “recognize excellence” in nine categories, from emerging artists to art patrons, curators and the media.

But here, no jury decides alone: 36 medallists have been selected, and it is they themselves who will vote to elect 12 gold medallists, revealed in December at Art Basel Miami Beach. A deliberately collegial approach, hailed as a counter-model to traditional competition.

Big names for a promising first vintage

The selection mixes legends and up-and-coming talents. It includes iconic artists such as David Hammons, Joan Jonas and Cecilia Vicuña, as well as rising stars like Lydia Ourahmane and Meriem Bennani, already seen at the Fondation Louis Vuitton and Reiffers Art Initiatives.

As for the “multidisciplinary” profiles, the choices illustrate the openness of the prize: Formafantasma (design) and Grace Wales Bonner (fashion) feature, underlining the cultural decompartmentalization that Art Basel stands for.

A model that could set an example

This awarding of prizes without direct competition is part of a wider movement: refusal of the single winner (as at the Turner Prize in 2019), collective recognition (as at the Salon de Montrouge), or even the abolition of hierarchical endowments (at the Pernod Ricard Foundation).

By teaming up with Hugo Boss, formerly a patron of an individual prize, Art Basel seems to be crystallizing this fundamental shift in the cultural world towards greater cooperation and shared reflection.

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