Nomura Holdings Launches USD 1 Million Art Award

On March 20, the Japan-based financial services company Nomura Holdings, Incorporated announced the establishment of the largest cash award in contemporary visual arts. The annual USD 1 million Nomura Art Award will be conferred to an artist “who has created a body of work of major cultural significance,” according to the press release. The prize is expected to go towards the production of “an ambitious new project that the winner did not previously have the means to realize.” Additionally, Nomura will present two “exceptional” emerging artists every year with USD 100,000 each.

Awardees are selected by an independent, international panel comprising respected figures in the art world. The jurors for the inaugural edition are Doryun Chong, deputy director and chief curator of Hong Kong’s M+; Kathy Halbreich, executive director of the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, New York; Yuko Hasegawa, chief curator of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Tokyo; Max Hollein, director of New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art; Nicholas Serota, chair of Arts Council England; and Allan Schwartzman, founder and principal of Art Agency, Partners, and chairman of the Global Fine Arts division at Sotheby’s. The curator, critic, and ex-director of Munich’s Haus der Kunst Okwui Enwezor, who passed away last week, was also on the jury. Art Agency, Partners acts as adviser to the award.

The inaugural winners of the Nomura Emerging Artist Awards will be announced at a press conference in Kyoto on May 21, while the recipient of the USD 1 million prize will be revealed this October at a gala ceremony in Shanghai. 

Xuan Wei Yap is ArtAsiaPacific’s editorial intern.

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