This Year’s Turner Prize Has Been Called Off, With UK’s Top Art Award Instead to Be Split Between Several Artists (Again)

In a growing trend towards more equitable prize-giving,
Tate Britain has announced that it
will be splitting a £100,000 ($123,000) fund for the prestigious
Turner Prize among 10 jury-selected artists while canceling the
planned exhibition. The move has been made in response to the
difficulties artists are facing due to the impact of the public
health situation, and echoes last year’s surprise announcement that
the award would be shared by all four
of the finalists.

This year, instead of the
traditional exhibition of four finalists the Turner Prize jury will
choose 10 artists to receive one-off bursaries of £10,000
($12,300), a significant boost
from the £45,000
($55,413) pot that has historically been split between the winner,
who receives £25,000 ($30,777), while the three short-listed
artists are handed £5,000 ($6,160) each. The new awards have been funded by a group of
Tate’s supporters.

Tate Britain explains in a
statement that the timeline for preparing the annual show was too
tight due to the disruptions caused by the public health situation,
so it decided to support a larger number of artists through the
“period of profound disruption and uncertainty.” The selected
artists will be announced at the end of June. 

“Gallery closures and social
distancing measures are vitally important, but they are also
causing huge disruption to the lives and livelihoods of artists,”
Tate Britain director and jury chair Alex Farquharson says in a
statement. “The practicalities of organizing a Turner Prize
exhibition are impossible in the current circumstances, so we have
decided to help support even more artists during this exceptionally
difficult time.”

Farquharson draws a parallel
with the prize’s namesake artist JMW Turner who “once planned to
leave his fortune to support artists in their hour of need.” In his
will, Turner tried to leave most of his extensive fortune to a
charity for “decayed artists,” although for legal reasons, this
plan never materialized.

The jury for this year’s Turner
Prize includes Richard Birkett, curator at large at the Institute
of Contemporary Arts; Sarah Munro, director of BALTIC Centre for
Contemporary Art; Fatoş Üstek, director of Liverpool Biennial; and
designer and curator Duro Olowu. They have been scouring
exhibitions for the past year to spot artists worthy of nomination
ahead of the June short-list announcement. The statement says that the prize will return
in 2021, but it is unclear whether it will return to its
traditional format.

The reformatted 2020 edition is
in keeping with a recent trend of prestigious art prizes
recognizing the difference that smaller awards can make to a
greater number of artists. In April, the organizers of
Canada’s prestigious Sobey Art Award decided to split the
prize between all 25 long-listed artists, awarding each
CAD$25,000. They also cited the “extraordinary circumstances”
provoked by the health situation. It remains to be seen how many
more prizes will follow suit.

Last year, the four finalists of
the 2019 Turner Prize made a surprise announcement that they would split
the prestigious award equally between them. Though this announcement
came before the new challenges presented by the ongoing global
health crisis, the jury recognized an already difficult social and
political climate faced by artists, explaining the move at the time
as a “bold statement of
solidarity and collaboration in these divided times.”

The post This Year’s Turner Prize Has Been Called Off, With
UK’s Top Art Award Instead to Be Split Between Several Artists
(Again) appeared first on artnet News.