Contemporary art&rsquo;s cultural impact reaches new heights at Art Basel Miami Beach, where the megafair is staging its first-ever awards ceremony.

The theater has the dazzling Tonys, and the best in architecture is honored every year with the Pritzker Prize. While contemporary art does not fall behind other visual endeavors in terms of spectacle, it has yet to claim its own annual awards to celebrate the industry in which a vibrant network of artists, curators, dealers, critics, philanthropists, and various behind-the-scenes workers operate across a packed global calendar. Blockbuster exhibitions, highly anticipated biennials, and market-definer fairs stem from the ceaseless round-the-clock efforts of an army of art-world professionals, some of whom enjoy the spotlight while others perform behind the curtain.
The Art Basel Awards will shine light on some of the sector&rsquo;s key players while lifting the veil to its makings for the general public. Conceived by the global art fair, which has annual iterations in Basel, Miami, Hong Kong, and Paris&mdash;as well as Doha, beginning this February&mdash;the initiative is what the fairs&rsquo; Chief Artistic Officer and Global Director Vincenzo&nbsp;de Bellis calls a &ldquo;strategic extension of our global platform, reinforcing our mission to champion bold artistry, elevate the fair experience, and foster a more connected and thriving art world.&rdquo; The Italian curator tells L&rsquo;OFFICIEL that the impetus goes beyond an industry-wide celebration to instead &ldquo;provide something with meaning.&rdquo; The invitation to look ahead, he believes, also &ldquo;comes with the responsibility for the winners to think about their future.&rdquo;
At a soiree during Art Basel Miami Beach this month, the Awards&rsquo; inaugural edition will deliver 11 unique glass trophies handcrafted by Swiss star architect Jacques Herzog. In June, during the original fair&rsquo;s 55th edition, in a ceremony at the 500-year-old Basel Town Hall, 36 finalists&mdash;or medalists, as they&rsquo;re called&mdash;were announced, each of whom was awarded with a pin. The cohort was cherry-picked by a jury of nine experts, including Sharjah Art Foundation&rsquo;s Director Hoor Al Qasimi, Dia Art Foundation Director Jessica Morgan, and the curator of the most recent Venice Biennale, Adriano Pedrosa.

Art Basel Awards trophy. Courtesy of Art Basel.

For the Awards, artists are recognized in three categories based on varying career trajectories. Doyens who have carved inimitable impressions on the sector are nominated as Icons, and they include American conceptual artist David Hammons, British painter Lubaina Himid, and Chilean-born textile artist and poet Cecilia Vicu&ntilde;a. Mid-career names who have already made a substantial impact with their work fall under the Established category, and include Iranian-German sculptor Nairy Baghramian, Ghanaian mixed-media painter Ibrahim Mahama, and American video artist Tony Cokes. The Emerging title, which describes young artists with a proven promise, includes Moroccan multimedia artist Meriem Bennani, Algerian conceptual artist Lydia Ourahmane, and Ecuadorian sculptor Sofia Salazar Rosales.
Curators&mdash;who often conduct the conceptual framework of an exhibition behind the scenes&mdash;are righteously brought to the center stage with a category that includes Indigenous American curator Candice Hopkins as well as Shanay Jhaveri,&nbsp;who runs the visual arts department at London&rsquo;s Barbican Centre. As a jury member, Morgan is particularly excited about voting for the curatorial category&mdash;one that recognizes the individuals&rsquo; invaluable partnership with the artists themselves. Their work &ldquo;underpins so much of what we experience as audiences, and their partnership with artists is truly invaluable,&rdquo; she says. &ldquo;The Awards rethink how recognition is given in the art world, celebrating excellence across a wide range of practices in a field where many forms of creative labor often go unseen.&rdquo; &nbsp;

”Resting Arms” by Nairy Baghramian, 2025, marble and cast stainless steel, installation view at Norway’s Kistefos Museum. Photography by Vegard Kleven. Courtesy of Art Basel.

Proof of the endeavor&rsquo;s ambition for broader impact: the inclusion of categories that celebrate those roles that often remain invisible to visitors of a museum or aisle-stompers at a hectic fair. One such category is dedicated to Allies, ambitious visionaries with passions that range from championing the visibility and accessibility of off-the-radar artists to working to achieve fairness for the sector&rsquo;s workers. Art Handlxrs*, for example, is a queer-founded organization that strives to elevate workers of color in the industry and shed light onto commonly overlooked labors of art handlers and fabricators. The Cross-Disciplinary Creator category, on the other hand, emphasizes the malleable borders between art and other immediate fields, such as design and fashion. British fashion designer Grace Wales Bonner, who was recently named the creative director of menswear at Herm&egrave;s, is among the medalists, as is the Italian design studio Formafantasma, which collaborates with museums and artists in addition to luxury houses like Prada.
The Awards come at a time when Art Basel has transformed into a global brand of its own, pushing the defined limits of an art market affair and functioning as a broader cultural attraction for curious minds&mdash;locals and visitors alike. What started 55 years ago in the small Swiss city&mdash;a humble fair with 90 galleries&mdash;is today an international extravaganza that&rsquo;s recognized by the fashion, entertainment, and design industries for its social promise. Each edition now operates as a nexus for a larger impression on its city with brands, celebrities, and other fairs positioning around its ripple effect. To ground this growing impact with a dash of humbleness, the final awardees are selected through an internal peer review system, in which each medalist votes for other categories.

“A Spell of Good Things” by Ibrahim Mahama, 2024, installation view at White Cube New York. Photography by Theo Christelis. Courtesy of Art Basel.

For Simone Farresin of Formafantasma, the peer-driven process adds a &ldquo;human&rdquo; nature to an otherwise competitive exercise. &ldquo;The outcome is respect for the work of others,&rdquo; says the Milanese designer, who is thrilled to be recognized in the Cross-Disciplinary category. &ldquo;It is the set of ethics and thinking that makes a difference, rather than thinking about whether what I&rsquo;ve created is design, art, or architecture.&rdquo; Baghramian holds a similarly unrestrained sentiment for the title and underlines its potential for the future: &ldquo;It&rsquo;s the art that is shaping the future. It&rsquo;s the process of making the art that shapes me.&rdquo; Of her trust in the creative process, she says, &ldquo;Art is a necessity. The prize and the recognition is a reminder to myself: Don&rsquo;t give up on art.&rdquo; Mahama also cherishes the uplifting nature of the honor itself, expressing his &ldquo;genuine surprise&rdquo; to receive a nod alongside artists he once studied himself. &ldquo;Cao Fei, for example, was very influential for me at school, as was her use of gaming systems,&rdquo; he says of his fellow medalist.&nbsp;
The team behind the inaugural Awards hopes that the fairs&rsquo; true nature shines through. &ldquo;It touches on every aspect of the industry, including the work that goes on behind the scenes,&rdquo; says de Bellis, noting his surprise that there has yet to be any similar industry-wide awards of this kind. He also believes in the inherent fluidity of creative territories, signaling that the award categories are susceptible to change in upcoming years as the industry continues to shift. One fact, however, remains certain. This month&rsquo;s bash at Miami&rsquo;s New World Center will launch what promises to be a tradition, contributing to contemporary art&rsquo;s legacy as a collaborative history&mdash;this time, written by many whose efforts have long gone unspoken.

Art Basel Recognizes Innovation And Creative Vision With Its Inaugural Awards

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