$100,000 in prizes will allow museums, hotels and others to acquire works at Expo Chicago in 2024

A view of the Expo Chicago fair in 2023. Courtesy Expo Chicago
Expo Chicago announced Friday (15 December) the three US institutions who will benefit from the tenth edition of its Northern Trust Purchase Prize. Along with two new prizes, award funds at Expo Chicago will total $100,000 at the first edition of the fair since it was acquired by London-based Frieze.
Named for the Chicago-based wealth management firm that sponsors the award, the Northern Trust Purchase Prize allows directors and curators from select US institutions to pick a work from the fair to acquire for their permanent collections, with Northern Trust footing the bill. This year, directors and curators from the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, the Milwaukee Art Museum and the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego will select works for their respective collections from the fair’s Exposure section, dedicated to galleries operated for ten years or less.
The earliest editions of the Northern Trust Purchase Prize focused on enabling acquisitions for institutions local to Chicago—including the Museum of Contemporary Art, Block Museum of Art, Smart Museum of Art and DePaul Art Museum. In 2022, the award was expanded to allow for applications from institutions from across the US. That year, the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, Portland Art Museum in Oregon and Pérez Art Museum Miami were awarded the prize, acquiring works by Adler Guerrier, Nohemí Pérez and Reginald Sylvester II, respectively. During this year’s fair, the three winning institutions were the Seattle Art Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts in St Petersburg, Florida, and the St Louis Art Museum.
“The expanded scope of the award, benefiting three US institutions in different regions, underscores the vital role contemporary art plays in shaping diverse cultural landscapes across the country,” Kathryn Kanjo, the director and chief executive of the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, said in a statement.
Another Expo Chicago sponsor, Macerich’s Fashion Outlets of Chicago, will introduce its purchase prize to acquire a work at the fair for its contemporary art programme of site-specific works installed throughout the outlets’ common areas. At the 2024 edition of the fair, Fashion Outlets of Chicago leadership and Expo Chicago representatives will select a work to join the collection, which already features works by artists including Derrick Adams, Candida Alvarez and Daniel Arsham.
A second acquisition prize from the 21c Museum Hotel will see the boutique hotel chain purchase up to two works at the fair that highlight art’s role in fostering civic and community engagement. The works will be selected by founders Laura Lee Brown and Steve Wilson, who are prominent art collectors, and 21c’s chief curator Alice Gray Stites for the company’s permanent collection.
The fair will also continue with the Barbara Nessim Acquisition Prize and the Barbara Nessim Curatorial Travel Award with Independent Curators International (ICI), both funded by artist and illustrator Barbara Nessim. The acquisition prize will allow a work created by a woman artist and valued at up to $10,000 to be purchased and donated to the DePaul Art Museum in Chicago. The curatorial award, an annual $3,000 travel grant, will support a woman curator attending the Expo Chicago curatorial forum.
The 2024 edition of Expo Chicago will be the first since the fair, long one of the largest independent art fairs in the US, was purchased by Frieze.

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