To celebrate the fifth edition of The Art Newspaper Russia Annual Prize, a longlist of five nominees for each of its five categories has been announced. The prize includes awards for the best book, exhibition, museum and restoration of the year, and an award for best personal contribution to the arts. Speaking of the five-year anniversary, Inna Bazhenova, the owner of The Art Newspaper group says, “We are happy that [the prize] has won recognition and that we not only describe the events in the art world but also have some influence upon them.”
The prize-giving takes part during a multimedia stage show, in which each winner is announced as part of a performance, directed and produced by the film director Alexey Agranovich and the pioneer of Russian video art, Kirill Preobrazhenskiy. Last year’s winners included the 150th anniversary show of the painter Valentin Serov at Moscow’s State Tretyakov Gallery, for the best exhibition; Stella Kesaeva, who commissioned the Russian pavilion at the 2015 Venice Biennale, for personal contribution; and Garage Museum of Contemporary Art in Moscow for the best museum. This year the nominees for the museum of the year are the State Tretyakov Gallery, the Institute of Russian Realist Art, the Moscow Museum of Modern Art, the Museum of Russian Impressionism and the Arseniev State Museum of the Primorsky Region.
The judges will decide on a shortlist for the prizes in January and the awards ceremony will take place on 2 February 2017 at the Manege exhibition hall in Moscow.