ARTnews has revealed the nominees for the 2025 ARTnews Awards, which honor excellence in art at US institutions and galleries.
Launched last year, the ARTnews Awards will reprise its awards in five categories: Emerging Artist, Established Artist, Lifetime Achievement, Best Thematic Museum Exhibition, and Best Gallery Group Show. This year, with more and more institutions paying mind to under-sung artists of the past, ARTnews has also introduced a sixth category, Best Historical Artist.
The awards were juried this year by five of the US’s top curators, as well as two ARTnews editors. This year’s jury includes Victoria Sung, Phyllis C. Wattis Senior Curator, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive; Ruba Katrib, Chief Curator and Director of Curatorial Affairs, MoMA PS1, New York; Ryan N. Dennis, Co-Director and Chief Curator, Contemporary Arts Museum Houston; Anne Ellegood, Executive Director, Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Rosario Güiraldes, Curator of Visual Arts, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Alex Greenberger, Senior Editor, ARTnews; and Maximilíano Durón, Senior Editor, ARTnews.
“We are thrilled to announce this year’s nominees for the 2nd annual ARTnews Awards. Because they are awarded based on exhibitions, the ARTnews Awards truly represent a record of the best bodies of work on view over the past year in the United States,” ARTnews Editor-in-Chief Sarah Douglas said in a statement. “The nominated exhibitions reflect the excellence and exacting standards of our jury and we can’t wait to celebrate them all this November.”
The 2025 ARTnews Awards nominees follow below.
EMERGING ARTIST
Claudia Alarcón & Silät at James Cohan Gallery, New York
Sula Bermudez-Silverman at Hannah Hofffman Gallery, Los Angeles
EJ Hill at 52 Walker, New York
Lotus L. Kang at 52 Walker, New York
Dionne Lee at Storm King Art Center, New Windsor, NY
ESTABLISHED ARTIST
Rosa Barba at Museum of Modern Art, New York
Wafaa Bilal at Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago
Raven Chacon at American Academy of Arts and Letters, New York
Andrea Chung at Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami
Stephanie Comilang at Center for Art, Research, and Alliances, New York
LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT
Candida Alvarez at El Museo del Barrio, New York
Carl Cheng at the Contemporary Austin, Texas
Ralph Lemon at MoMA PS1, New York
Raymond Saunders at Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh
Steina at MIT List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge, Massachusetts
BEST HISTORICAL ARTIST
Alvin Ailey at Whitney Museum, New York
Ruth Asawa at San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco
Noah Davis at Hammer Museum, Los Angeles
Madalena Santos Reinbolt at American Folk Art Museum, New York
Jack Whitten at Museum of Modern Art, New York
BEST THEMATIC MUSEUM EXHIBITION
“12th SITE SANTA FE International: Once Within a Time” at SITE Santa Fe
“Flight into Egypt: Black Artists and Ancient Egypt” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
“For Dear Life: Art, Medicine, and Disability” at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego
“Legacies: Asian American Art Movements” at 80WSE, New York
“Project a Black Planet: The Art and Culture of Panafrica” at the Art Institute of Chicago
BEST GALLERY GROUP SHOW
“Bowls, Boxes, Plates & Vessels” at Parker Gallery, Los Angeles
“Galleon Trade” at Silverlens, New York
“This artwork did not sell.” at Maxwell Graham/Essex Street, New York
“Trees Never End and Houses Never End” at Sky High Farm, Germantown, New York
“Vaginal Davis and ektor garcia: There’s Something About Maria” at Adams & Ollman, Portland, Oregon