2016 Award Nominees

The 2016 GFAA Nominees were announced live in London on Thursday, October 6.

In conjunction with Frieze London and Frieze Masters, the third edition of the Global Fine Art Awards (GFAA) program recognizes the 2016 award nominees in 11 categories. The program has expanded this year to include 3 new awards and a total of 78 nominees across 5 continents, 22 countries and 52 cities.  GFAA celebrates the best curated fine art and design exhibitions worldwide. More than 25% of the artist-centric exhibitions are women artists, and there is broad representation in size as well with 32 (40%) of the GFAA nominees from the top 100 art museums visited in the world (The Art Newspaper, April 2015), and 60% emanating from smaller institutions and other venues.

Nominees include exhibitions from many prominent museums across the globe: New York’s Whitney Museum of American Art, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, The Jewish Museum and The Metropolitan Museum of Art; LACMA; The J. Paul Getty Museum, and The Broad Museum in Los Angeles; the British Museum, The National Gallery, Victoria and Albert Museum, Tate Britain and Tate Modern in London; Le Grand Palais and Château de Versailles in Fance; the Palazzo Strozzi in Florence; the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam; the Museo del Prado and Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza in Madrid; National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea; Yuz Museum in China; the State Hermitage and the Moscow Kremlin Museums in Russia.

These exhibitions and public installations feature works by timeless masters, from Botticelli and Bosch, to Degas and Delacroix, as well as some of the most important artists living today. The 2016 list of Nominees includes Christo, Olafur Eliasson, Susan Philipsz, Sterling Ruby, John Baldessari, Frank Auerbach, Tony Cragg, Danh Võ and Tatsuo Miyajima.

The GFAA award program also recognizes group and theme exhibitions. This year’s nominations range from broad period shows, with “Ancient Sicily” and the “Vikings in Ireland”, to “Contemporary Art from Latin America” and in “Creative Africa”. Exhibitions addressing important themes are also nominated for their innovative work – some of these include Class Distinction, Divinity, World Exploration, Communication, and Love.

GFAA judges will ultimately select the winners from this slate of Nominees for these 11 award categories: Contemporary and Post-War (solo and group), Impressionist and Modern; Renaissance (solo and group), Baroque, Old Masters and Dynasties (solo and group), Ancient Art, Photography, Design, Fringe/Alternative and Public or Outdoor Installation. “Youniversal”, the twelfth award, recognizes the most popular nominee and is selected by public voting on the GFAA website.

Following the Nominee event in London, the 2016 GFAA Award Finalists were announced at an event hosted by Baccarat Hotel in NYC on October 25, 2016.

The culmination of the year-long process to discover the best curated art and design exhibitions will take place on Saturday, February 11, 2017 with the celebration of all Nominees and the presentation of the Winners of the 2016 Global Fine Art Awards (GFAA). The Award Ceremony will be held at the historic National Arts Club in New York City.

The Gala Committee is currently in formation and Gala tickets are now available to the public. Tickets may be purchased online through the Fiscal Sponsor of the GFAA program – Fractured Atlas.