ANNOUNCING: Igor Zabel Award for Culture and Theory 2024

This year, the award programme takes its inspiration from Igor Zabel's supportive, caring, and cooperative way of working in the field of art and culture. We live in an era of intensifying crises and catastrophes that damage human and non-human life and give rise to oppressive and violent politics and ideologies. In this context, the award programme celebrates practices that are life-affirming, build transversal collaborations, activate emancipatory legacies, and resist oppression and discrimination, cynicism and resignation.
 
Recipients of this year's Igor Zabel Award and Grants will present their work and, more broadly, discuss how art and theory from Central, Eastern, and Southeastern Europe can contribute to the world in these times of exacerbating crises.

ABOUT THE AWARD 

The Igor Zabel Award for Culture and Theory  acknowledges exceptional achievements in the field of visual art, culture, and theory in the region of Central, Eastern, and Southeastern Europe. Named in honor of the distinguished Slovenian curator and art historian Igor Zabel (1958–2005), the award has been conferred biennially since 2008 in cooperation with the initiator of the award, ERSTE Foundation, Vienna, and the Igor Zabel Association, Ljubljana. Candidates for the award are curators, art historians and theorists, art writers or critics whose work supports, develops, or investigates visual art and culture in Central, Eastern, and Southeastern Europe.
 
A three-member international jury selects the laureate and recipients of three grants based on proposals given by ten nominators (potential candidates cannot apply). The laureate receives EUR 40,000; three working grants are endowed with EUR 15,000 each. With total prize money of EUR 85,000 it is the highest and most prestigious prize for cultural activities related to Central, Eastern, and Southeastern Europe.
 
Igor Zabel Award Laureates: 

• 2022, Bojana Pejić, art historian and curator, Berlin.
• 2020, Zdenka Badovinac, curator, art writer, and former director of the Museum of Modern Art+Museum of Contemporary Art Metelkova, Ljubljana.
• 2018, Joanna Mytkowska, curator and director of the Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw.
• 2016, Viktor Misiano, curator, art writer, and editor, Moscow/Cisternino (Italy).
• 2014, Ekaterina Degot, curator and art writer, and currently artistic director of the steirischer herbst festival, Graz.
• 2012, Suzana Milevska, curator and art writer, Skopje.
• 2010, Piotr Piotrowski (1952–2015), art historian, Poznań.
• 2008, What, How & for Whom (WHW), curatorial collective, Zagreb; members of WHW have been appointed as artistic directors of Skulptur Projekte Münster 2027.
   

More: https://award.igorzabel.org/

Organizers: Igor Zabel Association for Culture and Theory, Ljubljana, and ERSTE Foundation, Vienna
Partners: Moderna galerija, Ljubljana