Sotheby’s Announces 2nd Annual Prize of $250,000 for Museum Exhibition

Sotheby’s released its selection of the winner of their 2018 prize in support of curatorial endeavors. The Academy Museum of Motion Pictures is the winner for a show on Black Cinema that opens almost a year from now. One value of the prize is the way in which it flags upcoming museum shows like the one in Cincinatti for the career or Robert Colescott or the Wallace Collection’s upcoming Henry Moore show:

Sotheby’s today announces the winner of the 2018 Sotheby’s Prize, which, in its second year, continues to celebrate curatorial excellence and champion the work of innovative institutions who strive to break new ground and challenge our understanding of art today. Presented to the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures (opening in Los Angeles in late 2019), the $250,000 award will support their exhibition, Regeneration: Black Cinema 1900-1970 which opens in Fall 2020. The first exhibition of its kind, Regeneration will reveal the important and under-recognised history of African American filmmakers in the development of American cinema. It will explore African American representation in motion pictures from
its advent to just beyond the Civil Rights era.

Launched in May 2017, the Sotheby’s Prize offers an annual sum of up to $250,000 to recognize curatorial excellence and help facilitate exhibitions that explore overlooked or under-represented areas of art history. In addition to the main prize, a sum of $10,000 is also awarded to a number of institutions whose exhibitions and initiatives are judged by the jury panel to be inspiring and transformative. Between them, the commended list embraces both established and underrepresented artists, as well as the relatively unexplored aspects of sexuality and race in art, while at the same time supporting inspired new plans for community-based mobile exhibitions.

ZUMU – A Museum on the Move: Next stop: Hura, Israel (Summer 2019)
Henry Moore: The Helmet Heads at the Wallace Collection in London, England (March-July 2019)
For Today I Am a Boy: Contemporary Queer Abstraction at Des Moines Art Centre in Des Moines, Iowa,
USA (June-September 2019)
Art and Race Matters: The Career of Robert Colescott at Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinatti, Ohio,
USA (September 2019-February 2020)
Jackson Hlungwani: Alt and Omega at the Norval Foundation in Cape Town, South Africa (February-July
2020)