[Press Release]
Submission deadline: September 23, 2018
The International Awards for Art Criticism Ltd. (IAAC) launches the fifth edition of their Awards this month (IAAC 5) and will announce their new competition rules, awards system and members of its international jury at a press conference to be held at Shanghai Minsheng Art Museum on May 21, 2018.
The Awards are explicitly intended to stimulate new critical writing. For the second year running, only previously unpublished reviews will be eligible for consideration. Apart from that, the number of award winners has been increased from three to four, and their value increased all round, to stimulate competition and attract a varied entry. As Ms. Gan Zhiyi, Director of the Shanghai Minsheng Art Museum and Joint Chair of the Organising Committee will explain at the press conference: ”We will always uphold the right to ask questions of authority and to test the value of received opinions. We believe in the value of what we support and earnestly hope we can communicate in good faith with those whose convictions we may, or may not, share.”
This year’s Awards will be as follows:
–First prize: 10,000 EUR plus a short visit to Shanghai or London for an essay in Chinese or English
–Three equal second prizes of 3,500 EUR for an essay in Chinese or English
These International Awards are open to candidates from anywhere in the world. The deadline for entries is Sunday, September 23, 2018.
Candidates are invited to write a review of 1,500 words or 2,500 Chinese characters on any exhibition of contemporary art, held anywhere in the world between September 20, 2017 and September 20, 2018. There are no restrictions on the contributors, in terms of their age, status or professional background. All submissions will be judged in conditions of strict anonymity.
The international jury for the IAAC 5 will be composed as follows:
–Gao Minglu, critic and curator
–Shen Yubing, Distinguished Professor of History and the Philosophy of Art, Fudan University and Director of Zhejiang University Center for World Art Studies
–Maria Fusco, Chancellor’s Fellow, Edinburgh College of Art, University of Edinburgh and author of fictive, critical and theoretical works
–Jean-Marc Poinsot, Founding President of the Archives de la critique d’art, editor of Critique d’art, Professor Emeritus, Université Rennes 2
–Matthew Collings, artist, art critic, writer and broadcaster.
Where possible, but only if relevant, please include with your submission a maximum of three images of the exhibition you are writing about, all cleared for publication. Entries must be submitted as a single PDF file no greater than 4MB—i.e. an ‘optimised’ pdf. The entire email should be no more than 5MB and should include an entry form downloaded from the website. The text may not have been previously published, and all publication rights must be assigned to the IAAC Ltd., which will not, however, decline any reasonable request for publication after November 13, 2018. All entries will initially be sorted and shortlisted by the organisers and academic partners in China and the UK, then translated into Chinese (for English-language submissions) or English (for Chinese-language submissions).
The International Awards for Art Criticism (IAAC) are hosted by an international Board, and organised by the China Minsheng Banking Corporation Ltd. (CMBC), the Shanghai Minsheng Art Museum and the Royal College of Art (RCA), with the support of the International Association of Art Critics (AICA) and Shanghai Artemis Art Center (SAAC). The principal sponsors are Shanghai Minsheng Art Foundation and Anxin Trust Corporation Ltd. The Awards also receive the strong backing of the cultural department of the local government of Shanghai.
On Tuesday, May 22, 6:30–8pm, the Royal College of Art in Battersea will host a panel discussion with Philomena Epps / The White Pube (Gabrielle de la Puente and Zarina Muhammad) / Emily LaBarge / Taylor Le Melle / Chris Fite-Wassilak, conversation led by Brian Dillon, looking at Art Criticism now and what critics owe to artists.
