The Guggenheim Museum in New York will no longer award the renowned Hugo Boss prize, the museum announced ARTnews Friday. The closely followed biennial award has raised the profile of numerous artists and comes with a cash prize of US$100,000 and often a museum exhibition.
The Hugo Boss Prize was established in 1996 by the Guggenheim Museum in partnership with fashion brand Hugo Boss to “honor excellence in contemporary art, recognizing the work of remarkable artists whose practices are among the most innovative and influential of our time.” “. on the museum’s website.
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The award has been presented to 13 artists since its inception and has catapulted artists already at the top of the game to even greater heights in the art world. The award winners were Matthew Barney (1996), Douglas Gordon (1998), Marjetica Potrč (2000), Pierre Huyghe (2002), Rirkrit Tiravanija (2004), Tacita Dean (2006), Emily Jacir (2008), Hans-Peter Feldmann ( 2010), Danh Vo (2012), Paul Chan (2014), Anicka Yi (2016), Simone Leigh (2018) and Deana Lawson (2020). Lawson’s win, announced in October 2020, was considered significant at the time as she was the first photographer to win the award.
Each of these artists was selected from a shortlist of other artists. These lists were often star-studded, including artists like Cecilia Vicuña, Kevin Beasley, Cai Guo Qiang, Laurie Anderson, Maurizio Cattelan, Vito Acconci, Tino Sehgal, Damián Ortega, Patty Chang, Camille Henrot, Laura Owens, Wu Tsang, Teresa Margolles and Ralph Lemon, who was announced earlier this week as the winner of the Whitney Museum’s $100,000 Bucksbaum Prize.
As with the artists, the award’s judging panel has been star-studded over the years, with some of the world’s most influential curators making the final decision, including Bisi Silva, Hans-Ulrich Obrist, Okwui Enwezor, Robert Rosenblum, Christopher Y. Lew and Naomi Beckwith, the recently appointed chief curator of the Guggenheim. The museum’s former artistic director and chief curator, Nancy Spector, chaired the judging panel for each edition of the award.
At the request of ARTnews At the next award ceremony, a Guggenheim Museum spokesman said: “The Hugo Boss Prize will no longer be continued. The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation has been honored to work with HUGO BOSS since the award’s inception in 1996 to recognize artists who address today’s most innovative and critical cultural movements. Concluding this generative project, we thank Hugo Boss for their many years of support and for the many innovative exhibitions, catalogs and public programs that have emerged from the awards platform, leaving an indelible impact on the institution over the years.”
In a statement sent to ARTnews, added Beckwith: “Before the introduction of the Hugo Boss Prize, the world was not nearly as enamored with art as it is today. I believe the award was part of the rise of contemporary art as an important part of the program in all major museums. It enabled the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum to bring contemporary art to a wider audience and to make art itself a larger part of a global cultural and social conversation that you see today in fashion, music, cinema and social media. We are in a very different landscape now.”
A request for comment from ARTnews to Hugo Boss was not immediately returned.
