Winners of 11th International Award for Art Criticism Unveiled

The list of winners for the 11th International Award for Art Criticism (IAAC), the world's only art criticism platform open for global submissions, was made public at Shanghai Jiushi Art Museum on Monday.

Chinese contributor Song Hailing won the top prize, receiving 80,000 yuan (US$565,656) and a short-term residency in the United Kingdom. Second prizes, each with a cash award of 30,000 yuan, were awarded to Charles Pickstone from the UK, Li Yidan (also from the UK), and Italy's Giorgia Aprosio.

The international jury for the 11th edition of IAAC consisted of five members: Alfredo Cramerotti (director of the Media Majlis Museum at Northwestern University in Qatar), Ying Kwork (senior curator of Tai Kwun Contemporary in China's Hong Kong), Ning Ou (founding editor of the academic journal ISOGLOSS), Filipa Ramos (lecturer at the Institute of Art of the Academy of Art and Design in Basel, Switzerland), and Bernhard Schulz (independent art critic specializing in art, architecture and cultural politics).

"Art criticism should uphold professional standards while transcending boundaries to encourage reader's participation in artistic dialogue," said Henry Meyric Hughes, co-chair of the IAAC Organizing Committee, at the awards ceremony.

"This year's submissions focused on pressing global issues such as climate change, ecological crises, artificial intelligence and geopolitics, reflecting art criticism's response to contemporary themes."

Hughes also introduced the upcoming publication "Selected Works from the International Award for Art Criticism." The book is a collection of all winning art criticism essays from the past decade and will be distributed globally to universities, libraries and other institutions through CITIC Press and Edinburgh University Press.