Deadline: 14-Sep-25
The Eleventh Edition of the International Awards for Art Criticism (IAAC 11) 2025 is open to candidates from anywhere in the world writing in Chinese or English about any contemporary art exhibition held anywhere in the world or on-line between 1 September 2024 and 31 August 2025.
Award Information
- The First Prize will consist of a cash award of 10,000 Euros(pre-tax) or the RMB equivalent of this amount (currently, around 80,000 RMB). Each of the three Second Prizes will be awarded a cash prize of 3,500 Euro (pre-tax) or the RMB equivalent of this amount (currently, around 30,000 RMB).
- The level of the Awards is pegged to a fixed amount in Euro, but international Award winners may choose to be paid either in Euro or in RMB at the official exchange rate on the day that the payment is effected.
Eligibility Criteria
- The awards are open to all, there is no age limit and they welcome entries from individuals representing a wide range of backgrounds from anywhere in the world, writing in Chinese or English.
- Entrants are required to submit a piece of critical writing about a contemporary art exhibition held anywhere in the world, between 1 September 2024 and 31 August 2025. The start and end dates of the exhibition may fall outside these dates, but the exhibition must have been open to the public or online at some stage during this period.
Selection Criteria
- The objectivity of the selection process is underpinned, both by the recognised professionalism of the Chinese and English-speaking jury members and by the strict anonymity of the judging process.
- All valid entries will initially be sorted and shortlisted by the organisers and academic partners in China and the UK, then translated into Chinese (for English entries) or English (for Chinese entries).
- The final adjudication will be in English, at a meeting of the combined panel of Chinese and English-speaking judges towards middle of December in Shanghai, and announced to the media immediately afterwards.
Application Requirements
- Submissions may be no longer than 1,500 English words or 2,500 Chinese characters in length. Variations in length of more than 10 % either way are likely to be rejected. The final selection of prize-winners and ca. 20 texts for publication in print and on-line in the IAAC s Exhibition Reviews Annual in early summer 2026 will be made by a high profile five-person international jury, which meets in Shanghai in November/December, and which changes each year.
- Submissions may be accompanied by a maximum of three images of the relevant exhibition (installation, performance, etc.), which are cleared in advance for publication (please give full captions and acknowledgments!). There is, however, no requirement to submit images of the relevant exhibition. Only provide images, if you consider them to be necessary to your discussion of the exhibition in question.
- Submissions should be sent electronically as a single PDF file no greater than 4MB-i.e an ‘optimised’ pdf. (The entire email should not be more than 5MB).
- Submissions should be sent electronically as a single PDF file no greater than 4MB-i.e an ‘optimised’ pdf. (The entire email should not be more than 5MB).
- All entries will be anonymised for the judges, but please include personal information and brief exhibition details in the body of the application form, for administrative purposes.
- Publishing rights on all texts must be assigned to the organisers.
For more information, visit IAAC.
