30 years Heineken Prize for Art

This year the prestigious Dr. A.H. Heineken Prize for Art has its 30-year anniversary. The prize of EUR 100,000 is awarded biannually to a prominent Dutch artist. The 2018 laureate is Erik van Lieshout. A perfect reason for a celebration of all the laureates and a unique opportunity to look at the development of Dutch artistic practice over three decades. The extensive exhibition in the Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven includes more than 75 works by the 16 laureates. The works range across the artistic spectrum from paintings to sculpture, photography, graphics, (video) installations and design. As well as watching and listening to the works, touching or even smelling is also required in order to fully experience the experimental and sometimes playful tradition that has largely defined Dutch art since 1988.

The selected works are drawn from all the laureates and offer a unique overview of the Dutch artistic landscape, full of both contrast and unexpected connections and continuity. Of the two most recent laureates, Erik van Lieshout will create a new, room-filing reinstallation of his work Die Insel, and Yvonne Dröge Wendel will present new work made specifically with the support of the award.

Charles Esche, director Van Abbemuseum: “The collaboration with the Dr. A.H. Heineken Foundation for Art offers an opportunity for our museum to become the Dutch National Contemporary Art Museum for the summer. We can show very diverse artists together and discover what they tell us about national origin and international reputation. Eight laureates are represented in the museum’s collection and both former director Rudi Fuchs and curator Steven ten Thije have been on the jury. The museum therefore feels close to this award and we are happy to be the first to present such an overview in its history.”

The laureates

2018 Erik van Lieshout
2016 Yvonne Dröge Wendel
2014 Wendelien van Oldenborgh
2012 Peter Struycken
2010 Mark Manders
2008 Barbara Visser
2006 Job Koelewijn
2004 Daan van Golden
2002 Aernout Mik
2000 Guido Geelen
1998 Jan van de Pavert
1996 Karel Martens
1994 Matthijs Röling
1992 Carel Visser
1990 Marrie Bot
1988 Toon Verhoef

Dr. A.H. Heineken Prize for Art
The Dr. A.H. Heineken Prize for Art has been awarded every two years since 1988 to an outstanding artist living and working in the Netherlands. It is the largest visual arts prize in the Netherlands, financed from a private fund, the Dr. A.H. Heineken Foundation for Art. Alfred Heineken introduced the prize, which was named after himself, as recognition and encouragement of talent in the arts in the Netherlands. It is a prestigious and generous prize, also in comparison with international awards.

The laureate receives EUR 100,000, half of which is intended for a publication and/or an exhibition. The Dr. A.H. Heineken Prize for Art—together with five major prizes for science—is awarded by the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW).

The 2018 laureate
Erik van Lieshout has received the prize for “the radical, personal and confrontational nature of his work.” The formal presentation of the award will take place on September 27, 2018 in Amsterdam, accompanied by the presentation of the five scientific Heineken prizes.

Publication
The exhibition is accompanied by a bilingual publication that offers an overview of the exhibition through images of the laureates’ artworks and contextualisation of the prize in essays by Renée Steenbergen on private patronage and by Steven ten Thije and Diana Franssen on the changing artistic landscape of contemporary art in the Netherlands, as well as information on each project.

Symposium cultural patronage
In the context of the exhibition, an international symposium on cultural patronage will take place on Thursday,  September 20 in the Van Abbemuseum.

Curators 
Diana Franssen and Steven ten Thije.

Courtesy
The exhibition, publication and symposium are made possible by the Dr. A.H. Heineken Foundation for Art and KNAW.