The Art Basel Awards 2025 are perhaps a turning point within the framework of contemporary art, innovating an award system that seeks to honor the whole range of activity in creative work, starting from artists and going through the institutions, curators, patrons, and friends who perform the sustaining and advancing work for global art in its ecosystem. The awards have been designed not as a competition but as a shining light of appreciation and unlike the common single medal per winner, there will be 36 medals conferred under different categories, with nine for each of the three major divisions: Icon Artists, Storytellers and Others. This shows the diversity of the creativity and also the structure supporting it and the innovation. The first cohort is selected by an international jury of distinguished practitioners, and the medals will be awarded at a reception in the Kunstmuseum Basel on June 19, 2025, followed by the first annual Art Basel Awards Summit on June 20, where Art Basel will host its first thought-leadership conference in the business of art.
Art Basel Awards 2025: A Paradigm Shift in Global Artistic Valuation
Art Basel’s decision to launch the Awards in 2025 underscores a desire to redefine how contemporary art achievement is awarded and recognized. In the past, most art prizes awarded focused on very few artists or one form of media; the Art Basel Awards, however, seek to transcend this limitation through nine categories: Icon Artists, Established Artists, Emerging Artists, Cross-Disciplinary Creators, Patrons, Institutions, Curators, Allies, and Storytellers. This approach adds a broader ecosystem that enables artistic production and reception. It recognizes that the art industry thrives not just on its individual makers, but also on streams of supporters, media, critics, funding agencies, institutions, and professionals whose specialized skills and assets provide shape and leverage for discourse and opportunity. Additionally, Art Basel’s designation of the awards as a year-long initiative with integrated campaigns and convenings also denotes some form of sustained action, as opposed to a singular engagement.
Award Sections and the New Cohort of 2025
The awards have been organized into nine categories and carefully balanced to encompass global practices in art and their support systems. Within the three artist categories, which include Icon, Established, and Emerging, medals are given to practitioners whose work rises above geographical and disciplinary divides. Icon Artists are bestowed with laurel for lifetime achievement and cultural impact; Established Artists for enduring innovative contributions; and Emerging Artists for promising early-career breakthroughs. Cross-Disciplinary Creators awards those whose work within conventional boundaries of art and its extensions, like performance, digital art, and sound art, as recognized by Art Basel, are emblematic of hybridity, a driver of contemporary discourse. The Patron and Institutions Medals bestow recognition onto these patrons and institutions while curators, allies, and storytellers garner accolades for the advocacy of meaningful artistic advocacy.
Inaugural Medalists: Winners and Profiles
Artists – Icon
David Hammons
American conceptual artists engage race, public space, and institutional power critically through ephemeral sculptures and performances.
Lubaina Himid
British artist and educator key to the Black Arts Movement, renowned for her expressive paintings and narrative installations of bold figures.
Joan Jonas
Her early works for live art and multimedia installations in the 1960s pioneered performance and video art.
Adrian Piper
Participatory actions or social engagement defines the work of this philosopher and conceptual artist who rigorously examines race, identity, and social justice issues.
Betye Saar
American assemblage artist recognized for her constructions depicting African American heritage and its symbolism of spirituality that is often politically motivated.
Cecilia Vicuña
Chilean artist poet who blends environmental poetry with fiber art. She is a text reciter and activist known for interdisciplinary installations.
Artists – Established
Nairy Baghramian
German-based sculptor of Iranian origin known for her biomorphic abstractions and examination of gendered spatial politics.
Tony Cokes
American video artist and a critic of advertising, mass media, and culture. He creates text-based interrogating works.
Cao Fei
Multimedia artist from China. She mixes real and virtual worlds to critique urbanization and contemporary youth culture.
Ibrahim Mahama
Installation artist from Ghana. His monumental works of jute sack textiles address colonial legacies of labor and trade networks.
Delcy Morelos
A Colombian sculptor known for her organic assemblages that combine earth and pigment to represent humanity’s relationship with the land.
Ho Tzu Nyen
Singaporean filmmaker and multimedia artist whose works explore myth, history, and collective memory through intricate layered audiovisual storytelling.
Artists—Emerging
Mohammad Alfaraj
Saudi Arabian mixed-media artist integrating abstraction with traditional craft techniques.
Meriem Bennani
Moroccan-American video and performance artist who satirizes contemporary diasporic digital culture.
Pan Daijing
Chinese innovator in sound and performance art who creates immersive works designed to change the way one traditionally listens.
Saodat Ismailova
Uzbek artist of interdisciplinary art and film who investigates post-Soviet identity and cultural memory through archival research.
Lydia Ourahmane
Conceptual artist from Algeria whose geopolitical focus as an installation artist interrogates migration, labor rights, and the capitalist relics of geopolitics.
Sofia Salazar Rosales
Celebrated Mexican painter known for her contemporary reinterpretation of folkloric motifs in vivid canvases.
Cross-Disciplinary Creators
Formafantasma
Italian design duo whose work combines art, design, and research with an inquiry into material culture and sustainability.
Saidiya Hartman
American scholar and writer whose prose is ethnographic in nature, incorporating archival exploration to examine the afterlives of slavery and Black identity.
Grace Wales Bonner
British fashion designer who blends classical tailoring with diasporic aesthetics, using them to articulate identity and cultural hybridity.
Benefactors and Patrons of the Art
Shane Akeroyd
An American philanthropist who collects art and focuses on helping Black and Indigenous artists. He works with groups that provide support to Black and Indigenous artists through his philanthropic work.
Maja Hoffmann
She is a Swiss founder of the LUMA Foundation and focuses on sponsoring art and science programs in Europe. Also, she deals with experimental art expansion.
Joel Wachs
The former member of the Los Angeles Council is now an arts administrator. He is also known for broadening public involvement in civic arts and commissioned public art.
Organizations
Art + Practice
A contemporary art exhibition held in Los Angeles that also provides social services to directly help the community.
Jameel Arts Centre
A dynamic Dubai institution that promotes contemporary art through public commissions, dynamic exhibitions, and interdisciplinary research.
RAW Material Company
An art and education center based in Dakar founded by Koyo Kouoh that supports African culture and the world’s art through fellowships, exhibitions and education.
Teachers
Candice Hopkins
A Tlingit anthropologist and curator whose scholarship reframes Indigenous art histories. She is known for rewriting and changing institutional narratives of indigenous people’s histories.
Shanay Jhaveri
The educator and curator for South Asian Diaspora who creates collaborative and community-based exhibitions.
Eungie Joo
She is a Korean-American curator known for her rigorous research-based exhibitions.
Partners
Art Handlers
A company in London specializing in contemporary art is known for its fabrication and technical aid to challenging artistic endeavors.
Works Gas Triangles With Networks
International network artist with originality and people for many disciplines.
Sandra Terdjman
A Brazilian sociologist and cultural strategist who works on community-based art projects across Latin America.
Media and Storytellers
Negar Azimi
An Iranian-American critic and editor focusing on overlapping contemporary art practices from outside the West with her sharp writing.
Barbara Casavecchia
An Italian curator and writer combining narrative and criticism in innovative ways to foster greater public involvement.
The Journal of Curatorial Studies
Scholarly journal proposing new concepts in curatorial theory, methodology, and practice focusing on the developed discourse.
The International Jury—Protectors of the Vision
Credibility is earned through the International Jury, which is chaired by the Art Basel Director of Fairs & Exhibition Platforms, Vincenzo de Bellis. The jury features other notable members such as Hoor Al Qasimi from the Sharjah Art Foundation, Elena Filipovic of Kunstmuseum Basel, Jessica Morgan from the Dia Art Foundation in New York, London’s Serpentine Galleries’ Hans Ulrich Obrist, Suhanya Raffel of M+ Hong Kong, Franklin Sirmans from Pérez Art Museum, and Philip Tinari of UCCA Beijing. A mark of the jury’s blend of institutional leadership and curatorial innovation is the recent passing of Koyo Kouoh, former Executive Director and Chief Curator of Zeitz MOCAA, which is commemorated here.
This jury has a mandate to act in several different capacities. Their choices stem from the belief that the intersections of practice, advocacy, and community building create the most impactful contemporary art. With a repository of knowledge that spans across all domains, from curator-directors to heads of institutions, the Awards guarantees that every Medalist is considered beyond an aesthetic or conceptual strand in relation to their ability to spur dialogue and foster systemic change. This jury-driven premise allows the jury to simultaneously be gatekeepers and enablers of emerging discourses while exercising a strategic grasp on the changing uses of social art.
Ceremony and Summit: Celebrating Visionaries
On June 19, 2025, the celebration of thirty-six medalists at Kunstmuseum Basel will mark the beginning of a commemoration that becomes part of Art Basel’s flagship fair in Switzerland. This reception will be global in scope, gathering artists, curators, patrons, and media, and will allow for both formal recognition and informal exchange. The day after, the Awards Summit will bring together jurors and medalists in a public conference format. This will include keynote lectures, panels, and workshops that examine crucial art world concerns, including but not limited to sustainability in art production and the geopolitics of museum acquisitions. By placing the Summit directly after the ceremony, Art Basel highlights the dual purpose of the awards: celebrating achievement and encouraging discourse.
These strategically selected priorities reflect underrepresented voices, digital innovation, and fostering inclusive ecosystems. Sessions will be administered in tandem with leading academic institutions and think tanks, guaranteeing rigorous intellectual engagement. Attendees can expect conversations like decarbonizing collections, AI in curatorial roles, and transnational collaboration. This merger of practice and theory bolsters the legitimacy of the awards among art scholars while also positioning Art Basel as a proactive instigator for reflection and renewal across the sector.
Peer-Selected Distinction: The Gold Medalists
The one-of-a-kind Art Basel Awards has a Gold Medal process, which will take place in December 2025 during the Miami Beach edition of the fair. After the initial cohort is announced, there is a limit of thirty-six medalists who will participate in peer voting to select up to twelve gold medalists. Part of the voting requirement states that half of the selected participants must be artists and the selection must be the utmost badge of achievement in comparison to others in the lateral categories.
Inaugural projections estimate that the Emerging and Established artist categories will be awarded a USD 50,000 unrestricted honorarium, while Icon category Gold Medalists will receive a donation of USD 50,000 to a charity of their choosing. Moreover, it is anticipated that established artist Gold Medalists will unveil a large-scale public commission at Art Basel 2026 in Basel, thereby extending the impact of the awards into future programming. These funds not only acknowledge prior accomplishments but also help sustain creative paths, emphasizing Art Basel’s role as both benefactor and host.
Consequences for Contemporary Art Ecosystems
The integration of artists, institutions, curators, patrons, and the media as a cohesive whole increases coherence within the art ecosystem, strengthened through recognition with The Art Basel Awards 2025. This paradigm shift realizes how the “genius” innovator is often the result of collaboration within advocacy and infrastructural networks instead of singular genius innovation. For researchers of the academy, the Innovation Era Awards provides an evolving dataset of criteria for recognizing “greatness” and “excellence” in the 21st century. The self-organized, peer-centered Gold Medal process may exemplify deliberative democracy and participatory governance inquiry into decentralization and non-jury models.
In terms of market strategy, the awards recast Art Basel’s brand equity, as the fair now serves as a gauge for both commercial appeal and cultural relevance, thus bolstering Art Basel’s brand. Spaces with Medalist artists gain the ability to use the award to increase the eminence and visibility of their art, while other patrons and subscribing institutions gain prestige through formal recognition. Their mutual symbiosis creates the commercial validation that exists, showing how awards tend to exponentially increase value throughout all sectors demonstrating how art, institutional and economic interests are interlinked.
Future Trajectories: Sustaining Momentum
Looking forward, the success of the inaugural awards will be contingent on Art Basel’s capacity to sustain engagement beyond the primary ceremonies. The plans for satellite regional events in Hong Kong and Miami seek to extend the Summit model while embracing broader participation and diverse cultural contexts. Additionally, digital extensions such as virtual exhibitions and roundtables will enable stakeholders who cannot attend in person to engage with and benefit from the discussions.
Developing academic collaborations includes joint fellowships and research grants to assess the longitudinal impact of the awards on an artist’s career, their practice, and institutional practices. With these proposals, the awards are framed within a more research-based approach; thus, Art Basel demonstrates a commitment to reflexive evolution and evolution grounded in data. This trajectory situates the Awards not merely as a recurring event but as an evolving praxis responsive to shifting artistic frameworks and socio-political currents.
To summarize, the Art Basel Awards 2025 start with a holistic recognition system that goes beyond prize award systems to build a transnational community of practitioners, supporters, and organizations. With its multi-category structure, peer-based awards, and convened assembly, the awards are not only instituted to celebrate achievements but also to shape contemporary art discourse and practice toward desired futures. In development, the program is expected to create new ways of collaborative recognition—defined by sustainable partnership, ethics, cross-discipline scholarship, and enduring impact.
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