2016 Award Winners

The culmination of a year of reviewing over 2,000 exhibitions to recognize the best curated fine art and design exhibitions in the world ends in the revelation of the thirteen Global Fine Art Awards (GFAA) 2016 winners.

Selected from 78 nominees in 22 countries, 5 continents and 52 cities, the third annual GFAA winners of the 2016 awards were honored at a black-tie Award Ceremony and Gala on February 11^th, 2017. Museum directors and curators, gallery directors and owners, artists and art aficionados were among the guests at the historic National Arts Club in New York City. Some of the honorees in attendance include: Charles de Mooij, Director of Het Noordbrabants Museum, Den Bosch,The Netherlands; Gary Tinterow, Director Museum of Fine Arts Houston; Sean Hemingway, Curator, The Metropolitan Museum of Art; Susie Guzman, Director, Hauser and Wirth Gallery; Susan Davidson, Co-curator of Rauschenberg in China with David White and Curatorial Advisor to the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation; Helen Hsu, Assistant Curator, Robert Rauschenberg Foundation; Lee Glazer, Curator, the Smithsonian Museum’s Freer and Sackler Galleries; Bryan Keene, Assistant Curator, The J. Paul Getty Museum; Fariba Farshad, Director Candlestar, and Co-Founder Photo London; Lina Lin, Researcher, National Palace Museum, Taipei, Republic of China (Taiwan); and Jonathan Henery, nephew of Christo, accepting the award for best Public Art on behalf of the artist Christo and Jeanne Claude.

The event was co-hosted by GFAA President and CEO, Judy Holm, and GFAA Advisory Board Chair, Lawrence M. Shindell, and presided over by Master of Ceremony, Peter Trippi, Editor in Chief of Fine Art Connoisseur magazine, and GFAA Advisory Board member, GFAA Judge emeritus.

Trippi says, “Consider how hard art professionals work to conceive and organize their temporary exhibitions and installations of art and design, and also how much money is spent to mount and tour them. Now ask yourself: how are the best of these projects honored, after the lights have dimmed and the loaned artworks have headed home? Oddly, in a world teeming with award ceremonies for seemingly every possible artistic activity (think “Oscars”), there is no program that recognizes such exhibitions… until the GFAA initiative was launched in 2014.”

This year’s judges are Dean Phelus (American Alliance of Museums, Washington, D.C.); James M. Bradburne (Pinacoteca di Brera and Biblioteca Braidense, Milan); Gina Costa (independent art historian and curator, Director for marketing and public relations at the Snite Museum of Art, University of Notre Dame, Chicago); Barbara Aust-Wegemund, independent art historian and curator, Hamburg); and Joe Lin-Hill (Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo).  They selected the winners in the following 11 categories: Contemporary and Post-War Art (solo artist and group/theme); Impressionist and Modern Art (solo artist and group/theme); Renaissance, Baroque, Old Masters and Dynasties (solo artist and group/theme); Ancient Art; Public Art, Design, Photography and Fringe.

In addition to the juried awards, the final award, “Youniversal,” recognizes the best exhibition of the year as determined by public vote from people across the globe, which all nominees are eligible to win. Thousands of votes were cast during the voting period, from October 26th through November 13th, 2016. To expand the digital presence of GFAA further, a new award was added this year: YOU-2.  The Top 10 Nominees, based on the Youniversal votes, became eligible for this Twitter-based award.

The Global Fine Art Awards 2016 Winners:

Best Contemporary / Post-War – solo artists

Rauschenberg in China / Ullens Center for Contemporary Art (UCCA) / Beijing, China

Best Contemporary / Post-War – group or theme

Revolution in the Making: Abstract Sculpture by Women, 1947 – 2016 / Hauser Wirth Schimmel Gallery / Los Angeles, USA

Best Impressionist / Modern – solo artist

Degas: A New Vision / National Gallery of Victoria, Museum of Fine Arts Houston / Melbourne, Australia; Houston, USA

Best Impressionist / Modern – group or theme (TIE)

The Lost Symphony: Whistler and the Perfection of Art / Smithsonian’s Freer and Sackler Galleries / Washington DC, USA

Jewel City: Art from San Francisco’s Panama-Pacific International Exposition / de Young / Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco / San Francisco, USA

Best Renaissance, Baroque, Old Masters and Dynasties – solo artist (shared)

Jheronimus Bosch – Visions of genius / Het Noordbrabants Museum/ Den Bosch, Netherlands

Bosch. The Centenary Exhibition / Museo del Prado / Madrid, Spain

Best Renaissance, Baroque, Old Masters and Dynasties – group or theme

Traversing the Globe through Illuminated Manuscripts / The J. Paul Getty Museum / Los Angeles, USA

Best Ancient Art

Pergamon and the Hellenistic Kingdoms of the Ancient World / The Met Fifth Avenue / NYC, USA

Best Public Art

Christo and Jeanne-Claude: The Floating Piers / Lake Iseo / Lake Iseo, Italy

Best Design

Manus x Machina: Fashion in an Age of Technology / The Met Fifth Avenue / NYC, USA

Best Photography (shared)

Robert Mapplethorpe: The Perfect Medium / Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) and The J. Paul Getty Museum / Los Angeles, USA

Best Fringe / Alternative

Susan Philipsz: War Damaged Musical Instruments / Tate Britain / London, England

YOUNIVERSAL (shared)

Jheronimus Bosch – Visions of genius / Het Noordbrabants Museum/  Den Bosch, Netherlands

Bosch. The Centenary Exhibition / Museo del Prado / Madrid, Spain

YOU-2

Traversing the Globe through Illuminated Manuscripts / The J. Paul Getty Museum / Los Angeles, USA

Timothy Potts, Director of the J. Paul Getty Museum, says “…this exhibition paints a vivid picture of the dynamic interchange of ideas, narratives, styles and images that characterized these eras. It is a useful reminder that globalization is not a new phenomenon. Indeed, it has lain at the foundation of much of our intellectual, artistic, social and economic life throughout history.”