Last week in Switzerland, Art Basel distributed the inaugural round of their Art Basel Awards, “the first global honors dedicated to recognizing and advancing excellence across the contemporary art world.” It’s a fun idea that promises to distribute money to some of the more important voices shaping the infrastructure upon which art fairs like Art Basel operate. The first round of thirty-six honorees included the likes of Lubaina Himid, Adrian Piper and Meriem Bennani. To hear more about this development, we caught up with Vincenzo de Bellis, global director of Art Basel Fairs and chair of the Art Basel Awards.
What were the origins of these awards? What’s the ethos that goes into them?
The Art Basel Awards emerged from a desire to chart a new kind of recognition that highlights the constellation of people and practices shaping contemporary art today. Rather than awarding singular moments or marquee names alone, the aim is to celebrate ongoing, influential practices across the ecosystem. This includes artists, yes—but also curators, patrons, storytellers and behind-the-scenes advocates who rarely receive the spotlight. It’s a platform rooted in celebration over competition, designed to affirm the shared purpose of shaping culture with virtuosity, rigor and care.
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences recently ruled that Oscar voters must see the movies they vote for. Is your selection process as rigorous? What can you tell us about it?
Unlike prizes that recognize a single project or exhibition, the Art Basel Awards recognize sustained practices—contributions shaping how art is created, disseminated and experienced. It’s a rigorous process designed to assess long-term influence or potential for long-term influence and ongoing creative leadership across the field.
We built a robust three-stage structure to ensure each nominee is evaluated holistically. First, anonymous “observers” from around the world, with expertise in various industry areas, nominate individuals and organizations making a meaningful impact across the contemporary art landscape. These nominations are then reviewed by an international jury—comprising nine of the world’s leading curators and museum leaders—who deliberate across four key pillars: vision and innovation, skill and execution, engagement and broader impact.
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From this process, the jury selected thirty-six Medalists, who were announced last month and honored during a private ceremony at Basel Town Hall and a VIP reception at Kunstmuseum Basel this week. Several Medalists and Jurors headlined the first annual Art Basel Awards Summit—our new, flagship program of keynotes and panel discussions with artists, curators, museum leaders, patrons and cross-disciplinary luminaries, discussing their respective practices and key topics shaping the future of the cultural field.
The Summit marks a key moment for the Awards. Its goal is to establish a forward-looking public program that brings together leading voices and outstanding talent from the international art world in high concentration to Basel, further elevating the fair week with premier thought leadership programming and new, cross-industry audiences. It also further reinforces Basel’s position as a leading cultural hub.
The artist winners are all very well-known, even the emerging ones. Will that always be the case? Or was this just a high-profile inaugural round to introduce the awards?
This inaugural cohort lays a strong foundation and establishes the Awards as a meaningful, credible benchmark within the cultural field. One of the key ambitions of the Art Basel Awards is to serve as a platform for broader visibility, helping amplify the work of artists whose influence may be deeply felt within the field but are less known to broader audiences. And while several of the artists in the Emerging and Established categories are well-regarded within professional and curatorial circles, many are still under-recognized outside of those spheres. Several don’t have gallery representation and are also little known in the commercial context of the art world.
As the program evolves, we expect to continue celebrating Emerging and highly experimental voices shaping the field at its edges.
Later this year at Art Basel Miami Beach, the thirty-six Medalists will vote to nominate twelve Gold Medalists, who will receive $300,000 in honoraria and gifts. That’s an innovative methodology. How did you come to it, and are you at all concerned that anyone is going to vote for themselves?
With a focus on artists in year one, Gold Medals will provide nearly $300,000 in unrestricted financial awards and commissions for five honorees across the three categories: Two Emerging Artists will each receive $50,000 in unrestricted funds; Two Established Artists will each receive $50,000, along with a major public artwork commission premiering here in Basel next June; and one Icon will be honored with a $50,000 donation made in their name to a cultural or educational organization of their choice.
We believe this peer-powered model is truly unique to the Art Basel Awards, placing agency in the hands of those most directly shaping the future of culture. The goal was to create a mechanism for mutual recognition, where honorees are not pitted against each other in competition—they are entrusted to elevate one another, which is both an opportunity and a responsibility.
While there are considerations in place to ensure fairness—for instance, no Medalist can vote for herself—the structure is grounded in the values that define the Awards: respect, generosity and shared purpose. With a group of practitioners this committed and community-minded, we believe the process will reflect that spirit.
The first award summit was held on Friday, June 20, the second public day of the fair, after which much VIP business had concluded. What was on the docket for this conference? Is it aimed more at professionals or civilians?
The Art Basel Awards Summit is free and open to the public, which was an intentional choice. We wanted to create a space for open, thoughtful exchange—one that brings together both seasoned professionals and those simply curious about the future of culture.
The program included conversations between Medalists and jurors, such as Cecilia Vicuña with Elena Filipovic and Ibrahim Mahama and Lydia Ourahmane with Hans Ulrich Obrist. The public also heard from institutional leaders like Suhanya Raffel (M+) and Joel Wachs (Andy Warhol Foundation), as well as behind-the-scenes changemakers like the founders of Art Handlxrs*. Topics ranged from rethinking patronage and curatorial practice to the evolving role of design, storytelling and grassroots infrastructure.
The Summit offers us a rare opportunity to hear directly from those at the forefront of our field, gaining insight into their respective practices, their shared and divergent preoccupations and how they see their work in dialogue with wider social, political and aesthetic forces. Through these conversations, we’re invited to understand not only where artistic thought is today, but where it’s headed—and to consider how these voices are collectively defining the art world’s next chapter.
Do your Medalists actually receive a physical medal? What does it look like?
Yes, we hosted an award ceremony for the Medalists, which took place at Rathaus Basel—the city’s iconic medieval Town Hall and a profoundly meaningful venue, symbolic of Basel’s centuries-long history as an international locus of civic and cultural exchange. There, each Medalist was conferred an individualized Citation and Medalist Pin. The Medalist Pins were designed in collaboration with French jeweler Lorette Colé Duprat.
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